Gatsby's Women: Fashionable Ideals of the 1920s

1920s dance

with Kevin Jones of ASU-FIDM

Wednesday, June 25th

7 - 9 PM PDT

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is set in the summer of 1922, beginning a decade of dramatic societal and cultural change, of new opportunities and roles for women, and, coinciding with this, dramatically new appearances. After World War I, many adventurers gained instant wealth on mercurial Wall Street and spent it just as fast, casting away inhibitions with Prohibition booze and Jazz. Among them were women who exercised their new right to vote and ventured further outside the home than ever before. Within the world of Gatsby, the female characters embodied this emerging modern age—in both streamlined fashions and extroverted demeanor. This presentation examines four ideals: The Flapper, The Vamp, The Sportswoman, and The Sophisticate.
The Zoom link will be emailed on 6/23/25.
 

Meet the instructor: 

Kevin in a Pink Tie

KEVIN JONES joined the FIDM Museum (now the ASU FIDM Museum at the downtown Los Angeles campus of Arizona State University) as collections manager in 1999, and was appointed curator in 2002. He oversees the Museum’s more than 15,000-piece dress collection that spans 400 years of history. Born in Ventura, CA, Kevin studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising and art
history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Kevin’s fashion and social history expertise encompasses the eighteenth through twenty-first centuries, and his diverse exhibitions cover Hollywood to high fashion. In 2009, Kevin co-curated the Richard Martin Award-winning exhibition, catalogue, and documentary High Style: Betsy Bloomingdale and the Haute Couture. In 2011, he co-curated the exhibition and catalogue FABULOUS! Ten Years of FIDM Museum Acquisitions, 2000-2010. And in partnership with the American Federal of Arts, he co-curated the 2021 exhibition Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girl 1800 to 1960 that recently completed a three-year, nation-wide tour, and is scheduled to open at the ASU FIDM Museum Galleries during the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The accompanying 344-page catalogue won the Costume Society of America’s prestigious Millia Davenport Publication Award.

  

Registration fee:  $15 for CGW Members
                              $20 for non-members

Zoom links will be emailed to students on June 23, 2025, after 5pm.

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