Read about Holly's work helping to prepare for the new exhibition at Killerton House. Volunteering for the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum Holly has researched and chosen material to loan to the National Trust, and has written a blog about her findings and experience.
Visit the exhibition at Killerton House now, open Monday - Sunday until November 2nd 2025. Included with ticketed entry.
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Dresses and necklace courtesy of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum.
Cinema Programme on loan from the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. EXEBD 18395
Killerton Estate, located in Broadclyst, has opened its doors with a new fashion exhibition, ‘Unflappable, Fashioning the 1920s’ featuring costumes and film publicity materials. The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, located on the campus of Exeter University, has collaborated with the team at Killerton by lending artefacts from the collection to show how integral cinema was to everyday life.
With the collection at the museum being so vast, we decided to focus largely on the monthly film magazine, Picturegoer, from 1920 to 1929 as well as some cinema programmes, press books, postcards, posters, and books. The plethora of artefacts reveal the key role that cinema and celebrity interest played in the lives of women. As scholar Lucy Fischer discusses in her work on American cinema, the 1920s is such an interesting decade to explore regarding popular culture like cinema and fashion, as it was the dawn of many things that we consider contemporary: the studio system, colour photography, and later, the talking picture.
"the expectation of women to marry, remain slender, and to not be too talkative"
The first task entailed searching through each monthly edition of the Picturegoer magazine and selecting any pages, articles, or images that were informative about 1920s consumerism, fashion, or celebrity interest. The visual appeal of the magazine was also integral to the selection process, with many items featuring detailed images of costumes and dresses.
The 1924 July edition of the magazine (pictured right) displays a key example of a monthly feature called ‘The Screen Fashion Plate’ which depicts the styles of the season as modelled by famous film stars. Actresses such as Dorothy Dore and Thelma Hill are shown modelling summer and beach outfits. Similarly, the edition from June 1925 (below) features evening dresses and fabrics that were fashionable, with ermine fur, ostrich feathers and scalloped trimmed skirts displayed. When looking at such features, it is evident why the decade is known as the “Roaring Twenties” with film stars flaunting glamour and wealth with luxurious gowns and styled appearances.
‘The Screen Fashion Plate’ demonstrates not only the seasonal fashion trends, but also the way in which women were targeted audiences of both cinema and fashion, with Picturegoer using celebrity appeal to encourage consumerism. The inclusion of the feature every month suggests its popularity, with each season revealing new, extravagant styles to try.
To narrow the focus of the research, I explored key female icons of the decade that embodied the zeitgeist of 1920s society. The flapper girl, perhaps the most recognisable icon of the decade, appeared soon after women were given the right to vote in America and represented a new liberation for women (Fischer 5). However, the flapper girl was mainly performed by young women, often middle or upper class, who used fashion, smoking, dancing and partying, to rebel against the restraint placed on female bodies in the Victoria Era (5). With her short, bobbed hair and her shorter skirts, the flapper girl soon became the style icon of the decade. Right: Picturegoer June 1926
When one thinks of a flapper girl, Clara Bow probably comes to mind for most people, but there were many other influential stars who were labelled as flapper girls, even before Bow. The film star, Colleen Moore, who features in the exhibit (look out for her!), was highly influential in the 1920s fashion scene. Soon enough, the flapper girl, associated with youth culture and a disregard for parental authority, became exploited by Hollywood studios to appeal to young audiences and get them to attend the cinema (Desjardins 121).
Film magazines like Picturegoer also utilised the appeal of film stars to attract cinemagoers, with the article from June 1926, called ‘The Clothes Line’ featuring Corrine Griffith, Colleen Moore, Norma Shearer and others. This article is set out like acts in a script, starting in a costume atelier where the designer is selecting the outfits for their next film. It is a snapshot of the luxury, wealth and excess often associated with the 1920s and the unobtainable ideals of beauty, lifestyle, and fashion, that were imposed on female consumers.
Another interesting article in the edition from April 1924 is the interview with Pauline Garon by Carolyn Carter, titled ‘The Irrepressible Flapper’. In this interview actress Pauline Garon talks about her desire to be seen as a flapper girl yet her reservations that at twenty-one she’s too old. Garon thinks that flapper girls must be between the age of fifteen and eighteen, stating that “After eighteen, one is a young lady.” The interview displays how the societal expectations placed on women in the 1920s meant that the ideals that the flapper girl represented were hard to obtain, even for stars like Garon. She also discusses her envy of Colleen Moore’s performance as a flapper girl in Flaming Youth (1923) which was notable for popularising the Dutch bob haircut that Moore had, as she stated in her autobiography called Silent Star (Moore 129). The interview gives an insight into the expectation of women to marry, remain slender, and to not be too talkative. Although the flapper girl image presented an idealised life for women in the 1920s, many women still experienced social and economic restraint that maintained traditional values of femininity.
The Picturegoer magazines were full of advertisements for women, with products like soap, shoes, stockings, hair care, and gowns featured across all editions of the magazine, especially in the larger December issues for Christmas films, gifts and fashion. These were also proposed for exhibition, such as “Erasmic: The Dainty Soap” from September of 1924, or an advert for The Gossard Line of Beauty, a dressmaker, from March of 1925.
The inclusion of cinema programmes and press books in the exhibition helps show how important cinema was in everyday life; they are artefacts designed to promote film but also to share messages about fashion, stardom and wealth. Programmes selected for exhibition are from organisations including Tivoli Strand, The Capitol News, London Pavillion, and Stoll Attractions, and with their art deco covers capture the style and eccentricity of the decade. A good example of this is the press book for Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall featuring Mary Pickford in a vibrant green period dress on the cover (pictured right). Mary Pickford’s status as a film star was utilised to appeal to audiences, with the press book including an article on Pickford’s opinion on the period gowns and how they impact the romantic film.
After selecting items for display, the next step was to decide which items needed digitising and which were in a satisfactory condition to be loaned out and physically exhibited. Many of the items were over a hundred years old, with loose covers and delicate binding, so were scanned and digitised for the exhibition. The fragility of some items encouraged us to further reduce handling and where necessary to photograph pages with a camera to reduce any risk of possible damage to the binding and print.
There were many more artefacts that we could have included in this exhibition, however we hope that the selected items display the prominence of the film industry in the 1920s and give insight into some of the star personas that shaped this decade.
EXEBD 2312 The Picturegoer June 1925.
EXEBD 23214 The Picturegoer July 1924
EXEBD 18245 Film Publicity Press Book: Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall
EXEBD 27293 The Picturegoer June 1926
Fischer Lucy. American Cinema of the 1920s: Themes and Variations. Rutgers University Press, 2009.
Desjardins Mary. “An Appetite For Living: Gloria Swanson, Colleen Moore, and Clara Bow.” Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s, edited by Patrice Petro, Rutgers University Press, 2010, pp. 108-136.
Thank you very much to Holly Styles for all your hard work and preparation for the loan to Killerton House.