This Year's Dress, August 15, 1923

This Year’s Dress May be Read as Well as Worn

The printed dress is becoming as widespread and as potent as the printed word. They range from hand-printed linens to the Javanese designs on cottons with a legend from the waist to the hem, to silks which are this year chiefly printed after Chinese or Japanese models.

You look down this year at a lap which was for so long a black Canton crepe plateau and find it a riot of leaves or elephants. The adjoining sketch, made of printed Cinderella, confines its silken self to a modest formalized pattern of leaves in wood brown and deep-sea blue. It has marginal notes at the neck, sleeves, bottom and belt of georgette crepe in a brown town to harmonize.

The collar, made of a double piece and draped softly shows an interesting return to the monk’s collar. The front is the same as the back, a trifle longer at the center. The long cuffs open at one side, are simply square pieces of material. The loose panel that covers the back is caught only at the waist and shows a definite blouse. It ends in an eight-inch band of plain georgette.

The only difference between the hat and a lampshade seems to be the small rosette on the right side, but it made a decidedly becoming model nevertheless, the scallops making piquant shadows on the wearer’s face.

From the Concord Daily Tribune, August 15, 1923. North Carolina women often copied dresses they saw in the newspaper or in magazines, giving a nod to changing styles. If they didn’t want to use a fabric with “a riot of leaves or elephants,” they could make the dress in a subdued fabric as shown in the photograph below.