A Late 1920s Garden Dress

Hello sweet friends. Welcome to another historical Fashion Friday. Today’s post features A Late 1920s Garden Dress.

This week I wanted to create a late 1920s dress that had a lower waistline. It’s a nice bookend to the roaring twenties since last week I made a green early 1920s dress that featured a higher waistline.

Inspiration

Afternoon dresses/garden dresses were a bit fancier than a housedress but not quite as elaborate as evening dresses featuring lavish embroidery and hand beading. It was a dress to wear out in public during the day.

The dresses were often made in various types of silk such as crepe de chine or georgette. Both fabrics have gorgeous drape.

Lightweight cotton and linens were quite popular in the summer months.

The dresses hit below the knee, could be long or short-sleeved and featured a wide variety of necklines.

The Patterns

For the dress, I used Simplicity S9088. This was a very easy to sew pattern. It is perfect for a beginner. I did not bag line the dress bodice since I added sleeves. All seams were finished with French seams. You can see in this week’s video how I altered the back pattern piece to give this dress a more authentic 1920s style. Just like on the green early 1920s dress I added elbow-length sleeves using Simplicity 3928.