Iconography of the 1920’s
This
essay will be exploring the iconic traits of the 1920’s, such as fashion,
makeup and art. I want to demonstrate how these creative and artistic aspects
affect society for the present and years to come. In this essay, I will be
focussing on women’s oppression of the early 20th century and how
these aspects sparked the women’s rights movement and how the treatment of
women changed forever.
The
Suffragette movement took place during the late 19th and early 20th
century. Design and semiotics played a big part in their protests and became an
icon representing feminism. Firstly, their emblem was a green, violet and white
flag which had a dual meaning; the initials of the colours are the same
initials as “Give Women Vote”, but they also represented individual meaning;
violet represents dignity, green represents hope and white represents purity.
This colour would be used on rosettes, banners, flags and badges. This gave the
suffragettes more of an identity.
Women’s fashion in the 20’s
was known as the “flapper” look, a slang word used for “Prostitute” before the
20th century. Its aspects were to mainly symbolize women’s eventual
freedom from the prior oppression of that time. They wore loose fitted dresses
to straighten their figures and flatten their breasts in rebellion against the
sexualising of women. Their makeup was dark and shaped to make the eyes look
sad and the heaviness was also to rebel against what was deemed acceptable of
that time outside of theatre. Lastly, their hair was short and bobbed which was
also in rebellion to the perception that women were sexual objects.
In
1908, London Jewellers Mappin & Webb issued an edition of suffragette
jewellery using amethysts, pearls and peridots to represent the flag colours.
Above –left is an antique suffragette ring and above-right is a present-day
made suffragette pendant; even today, they’re still being made and are still a
recognizable icon.
Bibliography
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