1920s JAZZ AGE, Fashion and Textiles Museum

Twinkling flapper dresses, cocktails and jazz: the 1920s has the reputation for being among the most exciting and liberating of periods.

Haute couture and ready-to-wear fashions from 1919 to 1929 reflected the dizzying social change of the time. They reflected the new enthusiasm for life and indulgence in frivolity that arrived with the end of the First World War.

From Paris and London to New York and Hollywood, the 20s offered the modern woman a completely new, empowering style of dress that stretched from the top of their short bobs to the bottom of their dance-ready, healed shoes.

Over 150 garments from the Jazz age are winging their way over to the London and Textiles museum this September. Explore the height of twenties fashion, including sportswear, printed day dresses, beaded evening wear, velvet capes and silk pyjamas that reflect the glamour, excess and modernity of the decade.

Illustrations form Gordon Conway taken from the Illustrated London News Archive at Mary Evans are also on display, alongside photographs by Abbe, Beaton, Man Ray and Baron de Meyer highlight the role of magazines in promoting the 1920s look.