I rather love that brief but strange and potent period of fashion history when ladies' dresses were shifting their lines and shape from that of the Twenties into that of the Thirties. Even as the now-iconic look of the latter decade - the straight-edge, close-cropped, waistless Garçonne silhouette - was finally being universally accepted, waistlines began flirting with a woman's actual waist. And just as skirt lengths reached their greatest height yet - skimming or even floating above the knees - hemlines started falling. Sort of. For a few years fashion designers and the dress-buying public didn't seem able to decide what length they preferred. So while the front of the skirts stayed knee-length, the sides or back frequently headed for the floor. All sorts of unusual configurations were employed in this endeavor: completely bi-level skirts, longer overskirts, long and full sash ends, exaggerated handkerchief hems, all manner of flounces and floating panels. Some of these creations were wonderfully graceful - poetic, even - while others were just odd and awkward. Unlike other periods of fashion, when one style seemed to blend fairly seamlessly - oh, I made a pun! - into the next, this transition was a bit of a slow-motion scramble. And it would seem that the hard-edged, boyish Twenties refused to give in to the softly feminine Thirties without a fight.
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