The Roaring Twenties The roaring 1920s was a time where Americans were living the American dream. Many people called it the “Age of Excess” because it was the first time in American history that people could afford to buy abundance and buy anything that they pleased. The outstanding time period, the 1920s, was affected by many inventions and a new life that Americans were adapting to. Fashion was a big part of the 1920s and it was all about comfort. The women wore there skirts short and they wore their dresses with fur and sequins and colors were bright and pale often in a dramatic combination. They also wore drop waist dresses that were much shorter than dresses previously worn and they started wearing red lipstick. Perfume and mascara also became popular. The women partied, smoked, drank, and rode in automobiles also in the 1920s. They left their corsets behind in the nineteen-twenties and put on a cloche hat to cover their short locks. They dropped their dress waistlines to their low hips and enjoyed the looseness of the prime time of their lives. The women also wore flapper dresses instead of wearing tight dresses. The cloche hats made it known that you had short hair because they could only be worn properly with flat short hair. Cloche hats were also considered fashionable because they covered women’s foreheads (having your forehead exposed was considered unfashionable at the time). The men wore knickers in the early twenties; they didn’t always wear ties. They let go of their business clothing in the early nineteen twenties and opted for a wide, loose fitting pant, called Oxford Bags. Though the men’s style did change, the change was not as drastic as the change of the women’s fashion. The men’s fashion trends were most common in the colleges. In this time period, the formal menswear was a tuxedo with all the elements, the jacket, (with tails), vest, and pants all made from different types of material. Men wore bowler hats and kept their hair very slick. Burberry and two-toned shoes became popular. “The Past Is a Blast Keeping the Flame of the Past Alive Start Reliving Yesterday Today” (DeFiore Enterprises). The radio was invented during this time and instantly became popular. This invention, along with the automobile, was invented. In 1924, 2.5 million radios were in American homes. People would gather every day to listen to live shows over the radio and there was a huge clamor to own one. Jazz music ruled the air waves in the 20s. It was being played in dance halls and roadhouses everywhere. The early history of radio is the history of technology that produced radio instruments that use radio waves. Later radio history increasingly involves matters of programming and content. The late 1920s, films were silent, sometimes by live music from a piano or organ. Also, in the 1920s, radio began being used for the promotion of newspapers, with news being read from papers that sponsored time on the radio. The decade of 1920s marked huge advances in the music industry. Jazz had become popular music in America, although older generations considered the music threatening to old cultural values. In 1920’s America - known as the Jazz Age, the Golden Twenties or the Roaring Twenties - everybody seemed to have money. In the early years of jazz, record companies were often eager to decide what songs were to be recorded by their artists. Popular numbers in the 1920s were pop hits such as "Sweet Georgia Brown", "Dinah" and "Bye Bye Blackbird". By the late 1920s motion pictures had gone from silent to sound, creating another medium for the sale of sheet music and phonograph records. Soon Broadway and Tin Pan Alley songwriters would be exercising their craft for films. The first film Don Juan starring John Barrymore and The first cartoon Plane Crazy with Mickey Mouse. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had