From the Paco Rabanne runway to the pages of Vogue, fabulous flapper-style headwear is jingling its way through the season. It’s hardly surprising, now that we’re getting into the swing of the roaring twenties, right? In fact, rather than materialising organically in this new out-out fashion era, we might have just manifested the trend for twinkling headpieces ourselves.
“A lot of people had decided that a return to the 1920s would happen during lockdown, because it has been a 100 years, and there was this idea that we would all go and party,” says Oriole Cullen, head of modern textiles and fashion at the V&A. “Is it real? Or is it just something that seemed kind of timely to celebrate and has grabbed our attention?” she asks. There are always elements of the decade’s fashion in every season, but the brilliant frivolousness of beaded headwear is much more headline grabbing than, say, the “straight up and down” tunic-style silhouette routinely seen at Miu Miu.
Flapper-style head adornments are the wild cousin of the cloche hat, which was invented to frame the wearer’s short hair during a decade when androgynous fashion first had its peak. “Remember, this is the era when the bobby pin was invented to keep short hairstyles in place; it was all about tightness,” explains Cullen. “Previously hairpins were old fashioned and just sort of jabbed into the bigness of the hair.” What followed was headwear that draped and accented the wearer’s wonderfully rebellious sculptural hair ’dos during a time of dressing up and looking unashamedly spectacular after the first world war. “There was a great craze for fancy dress in the ’20s,” asserts Cullen.
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Mona Tougaard wearing a Slim Barrett headpiece, and Fran Summers in the December 2021 issue of British Vogue.
Coupled with the rise of shimmering costumes in cinema – all that glitz made black-and-white film pop on screens – and the use of cellophane in Cecil Beaton’s photographs, and the showbiz makeover of plain accessories was destined to happen during a time when fashion’s inspiration largely came from movie theatres. “Sparkly headdresses are beautiful at framing and emphasising the face,” notes Cullen. “When you walk into a room, it’s the first thing that people see. It’s a statement, and there was – and is – a real resurgence of that feeling of wanting to be noticed.” Also the look du jour for ’20s style mavens? Metallic wigs, for those for whom weighty silver headwear was not outré enough.
Accessibility is also a huge factor in trends taking off – however Gatsby-esque they are. “A key feature of the 1920s was democratic style; you could get the look for less very easily,” says the curator, recalling a quote she recently came across from Loelia Mary Ponsonby, the Duchess of Westminster, in which she was intrigued by the glittery headbands painted with glue and then dusted with diamanté rising in popularity at the time. “I think that’s why fashions become fashions; it’s when they can be copied and accessed by everyone that they become fixed in the memories of that period,” explains Cullen.
A quick Google for flapper-style fringed headdresses now brings up all manner of Charleston-inspired pieces in which to channel your inner Daisy Buchanan. But those looking for a fresh spin on sequins should look to jewellery designers – from Alighieri’s Rosh Mahtani to Slim Barrett – for crystalised pieces that are modern heirlooms to pass down to future generations, who will no doubt have their own desire for glitter as an antidote to what’s in the news.
One of Cullen’s favourite headpiece reference points in recent years is helpful in discerning how to wear the ornate accessories now. Grace Wales Bonner’s use of divinely opulent headpieces in her graduate collection, entitled Afrique, mixed couture and African craftsmanship techniques in a striking menswear offering. In the pages of December’s Vogue, which are brimming with extravagant fashion inspiration, Paco Rabanne chainmail headwear is teamed with party denim and mixed-media dresses. In short, anything goes. During a season in which an abundance of beading doesn’t seem out of the ordinary anyway, why not go the extra mile?
SOURCE : VOgue
