Plaid Petticoats: Radical Stockings: Tales of the Jazz Age (3)

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Radical Stockings: Tales of the Jazz Age (3)

I'm a little late to the stocking party (see posts here and here), but while reading May Day in Tales of the Jazz Age this sibling argument between socialist-party-worker Henry and his sister, I had to investigate myself. While sitting on his desk, Edith and Henry have the following conversation:

"I suppose you think I'm a --a waster. Sort of the World's Worst Butterfly."
Henry laughed....
She paused, " --but somehow I began thinking how absolutely different the party I'm on is from --from all your purposes. It seems sort of --of incongruous, doesn't it? --me being at a party like that, and you over here working for a thing that'll make that sort of party impossible ever any more, if your ideas work."
...Her feet, which had been idly swinging, stopped and her voice dropped a note.
..."You're wearing beautiful stockings," he interrupted. "What on earth are they?"
"They're embroidered," she replied, glancing down. "Aren't they cunning?" She raised her skirts and uncovered slim, silk-sheathed calves. "Or do you disapprove of silk stockings?"

Who could ever disapprove of silk stockings? Well, when the flappers started rolling them down and wearing shorter skirts...a lot of people.

Girls with rolled stockings, 1926

I decided to have a look at 1920s images of stockings while thinking of Edith, and I found some I really liked! Not many of them are exactly what I pictured as an embroidered silk stocking, but there are still a lot of fun. What do you think? Will you be rolling your stockings for Gatsby events this year?