1930s Bias-Cut Silhouette

After the straight, dropped-waist dresses of the 1920s, the 1930s brought the waist back to its natural position and let the body's curves show again. But they did it softly. Instead of corsets and structure, 1930s fashion shaped the body through cut and drape, above all through the bias cut: cutting fabric at 45 degrees to the grain so it stretches and clings, skimming over the figure and pooling at the hem. Long, fluid evening gowns in satin and crepe, cut on the bias, are the image of the decade.

How the decade's shape changed

• 1929-early 1930s. After the stock market crash of 1929, hemlines dropped quickly, to mid-calf for day and to the floor for evening, and waists returned to their natural level. The silhouette lengthened and slimmed.
• Early-mid 1930s. Bias-cut evening gowns with bare backs (the back became the focus of evening dresses), cowl necklines and flared hems. Daywear was slim, often with details at the shoulders: small puffed sleeves, capelets, flutters and yokes.
• Mid-late 1930s. Shoulders widened. FIT describes daytime looks becoming "tailored and angular, with square epauletted shoulders" from about 1936. Elsa Schiaparelli was especially associated with structured shoulders and witty, surrealist details.
• 1939. Skirts shortened and fullness returned, with nipped waists under broad padded shoulders. This silhouette carried into the war years.

Vionnet and the bias cut

Cutting on the bias wasn't new, but Madeleine Vionnet made it the basis of whole garments. She opened her Paris house in 1912 and, after closing during the First World War, reopened and became, through the 1920s and 30s, the name most associated with bias-cut construction. She draped her designs on a small wooden mannequin rather than drafting them flat, and used the fabric's diagonal stretch to make dresses that followed the body without darts or fastenings, many of them slipping on over the head. She closed her house in 1939. See Notable Figures and Draping vs. Flat Pattern.

Hollywood and mass fashion

Sound films made Hollywood costume designers into fashion leaders. FIT notes that a single dress designed by Gilbert Adrian for Joan Crawford in the 1932 film Letty Lynton, with huge ruffled sleeves, was copied so widely that Macy's sold around half a million versions. Bias-cut satin gowns worn by film stars spread the look to ready-to-wear and home sewing patterns.

Fabrics and new materials

Bias-cut gowns used fabrics that drape: silk satin and crepe, crepe-backed satin (one side shiny, one matte), velvet, and increasingly rayon crepe and satin, which made the look affordable. The decade also saw the development of new materials: FIT dates the invention of nylon at DuPont to 1935 (it reached the public as stockings in 1940), and elasticated yarns made lighter, two-way-stretch girdles possible. See Evolution of Undergarments.

Fastenings changed too. Slide fasteners (zippers) moved from boots and bags into clothing during the decade, often in side-seam plackets, alongside the hooks, eyes and snaps that remained common.

Sewing a bias-cut gown

Bias cutting is the technical core of any 1930s reproduction, and it behaves differently from straight-grain sewing. See Bias for the background.

1. Choose a fabric that drapes: crepe, crepe-backed satin, charmeuse, rayon. Crisp fabrics fight the bias.
2. Allow lots of fabric. Bias layouts are wasteful, because pieces sit diagonally on the fabric. A long bias gown can need two or three times the fabric of a straight-cut one.
3. Cut single layer with the pattern's bias grainline exactly parallel to the selvage, and flip the pattern for the second side. Cut over paper if the fabric is slippery.
4. Don't let pieces hang off the table while cutting or sewing. They stretch out of shape.
5. Sew seams with a little stretch. Sew with a slightly shorter stitch while gently stretching the seam, or use a very narrow zigzag, so the stitches don't snap when the bias stretches in wear. Some sewists stabilise shoulder and neckline seams with stay tape.
6. Fit with the fabric hanging. A bias dress grows longer and narrower as it hangs, so fit after the pieces have hung.
7. Hang before hemming. Let the finished gown hang for at least a day, ideally on a dress form, then level and hem. A narrow or rolled hem suits the fluid fabric.
8. Finish lightly. French seams or narrow bound seams, and bias binding or bias facings at necklines and armholes.

A pattern that keeps coming back

The bias-cut slip dress returned in the 1990s, stripped of 1930s glamour and worn casually. The construction is almost identical. And the next decade's swing from soft drape to structure, culminating in the New Look, is one of the clearest examples of fashion moving back and forth between those two ways of shaping a garment.