Well . . . the clothes make a little bit more sense when you consider what they were a rebellion against. Women's fashions of the generation previous were all about the exaggerated hourglass figure created by the corset. In order to be fashionable, corsets had to be laced so tightly that breathing was difficult and internal organs frequently became deformed (which explains a good deal of the propensity of ladies in Victorian literature to have fainting fits and "spells" - they couldn't breathe.) Add to that a bustle, multiple layers of undergarments, long skirts, and highly insensible shoes, and one begins to wonder how they could move at all. The straight-line clothes of the twenties, which decidedly de-emphasized the bust, waist, and hips, and which were therefore impossible to wear in combination with a corset, were probably a god-send for women who wished to, say, inhale. Add to that shorter skirt lengths and fewer undergarments - designers estimate that the amount of material it took to fully clothe a woman dropped by 80% between 1911 and 1922 - and movement was possible as well.
Of course, this wasn't the only origin of the fashion, and not all of the roots were as palatable to modern tastes. Twenties clothing design was also the apotheosis of the growing "heroin chic" movement which began in the early eighteen nineties and still pops up periodically today. Wasting diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis, and addiction to heroin, were romantically associated with sensitivity, artistic genius, and ethereal beauty. The pale, thin look associated with diseases became fashionable among the artistic set (take a look at the paintings of Edvard Munch *other* than "The Scream" and you'll get a good idea of what was considered sexy - or take a look at the visual ideals of the modern goth movement, which often has similar sensibilities and probably is directly related; remember, this is also when "Dracula" popularized vampires in European pop culture.) With the passing decades, the look also spread among those who merely wanted to appear artistic; eventually, there were a sizeable number of perfectly healthy people trying their darndest to look like they were diseased addicts. This fascination with slimness was intimately connected to the rebellion against the corset from the beginning, and when one gained popularity, so did the other.
This is not to say that fashion was the same everywhere; certainly most older women still preferred the Victorian look, and were much dismayed by the "flappers". The older generation had also considered "plump" a compliment rather than an insult, which undoubtably led to intergenerational conflict at the dinner table. In America, a robust, healthy tan was generally much more popular than a ghostly pallor (to the extent that members of the American artistic community complained about the appalling lack of taste of the tanned populace as a whole.) But throughout Europe and America, thin was definitely in, bringing with it a host of eating disorders which still remain with us today.
Of course, fashion cannot be viewed as a monolith (outside of Europe and America, certainly, the only flappers were tourists from Europe and America.) There were a number of eccentric and maverick rebels against the (somewhat conformist) eccentric, maverick rebellion of the flappers; one of the groups most noted for their failure to follow fashion was the small but growing community of women world travellers.
The mountain climbers among them usually simply adopted men's attire with minimal hesitation (ever try to climb a mountain in a dress?) But many of the others did not adopt male dress with the rapidity a modern mind might expect. Among female travellers in the swamps and jungles, there were often heated debates as to whether skirts of trousers were preferable (including one famous and somewhat convincing argument that a hoop skirt is the *only* article of clothing which stands a chance of saving you from quicksand.) Women who made a profession of travelling by sea tended to be divided into those who followed the height of feminine apparel design and those who outright cross-dressed. Aviatrixes tended to wear a rather practical combination of the gear absolutely necessary for open-cockpit air travel and women's attire, although a few simply went all the way and adopted men's dress (Katya's Russian army surplus flightsuit is her preferred mode of dress and comes out whenever she feels she can wear it without attracting unwanted attention, which is seldom, these days. But it remains snugly folded at the bottom of her duffel bag, eternally ready for use, since she always feels vaguely as if she is in disguise, in costume, or somehow cross-dressing if she wears anything else.) Western women who travelled in desert climes were somewhat unique in that a few of them adopted native dress, either women's or, in some cases, men's. Not all of them did this; some dressed just as their male compatriots did, and a surprising number - probably most, in fact - remained dressed in the fantastically innapropriate fashions of their home countries; well into the 1920's, some Egyptians made a nice little cottage industry out of "assisting" corseted matrons up to the top of the Pyramids, as their Victorian clothing entirely prevented them from standing a chance of making it up on their own without breaking both ankles.
Incidentally, men's fashions also changed in the '20's. While they did not have anything as evil as a corset to rebel against, and therefore the changes were smaller, it is a myth that men's fashions remain relatively constant while women's fashions change (think of the differences between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, or between the seventies and the eighties.) Probably this idea was brought about as a result of the ant-like conformity of business attire, which to a certain extent has spread out of the workplace and into the world in such a way that there do seem to be several articles of men's clothing which have remained appropriate dress for a hundred years or so; now that more women have entered the corporate workplace, I expect to see a similar longevity of some articles of women's clothing.
One change in men's dress, for example, was the gradual disappearance of facial hair. It had been lessening in popularity, and then an experiment in France demonstrated that moustaches and beards retain more bacteria than clean-shaven faces. Soon, the enormous mustaches often associated with the nineteenth century began to vanish. Although this was a definite trend it was, again, not universal; in the decadent German and Austrian empires, smaller (but still bacteria-laden) moustaches remained popular, while in Russia, the proletariat naturally sneered at the bourgeios fashion trends followed in the rest of Europe and intelligently kept their beards as practical measures against the cold.
Male dress of course underwent other changes, too; as with women's clothing, attire that would previously have been considered far too casual to wear outside - or inside, at the height of Victorianism - became acceptable (such as shirtsleeves.) In general, in the twenties, all around the demands of Victorian clothing eased up considerably, although sometimes with results that seem, to modern sensibilities, a bit ugly.
Pleasant dreams.
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