How was fashion broken up by socioeconomic classes?
Von Firley: Fabrics that were used in clothing from 1900 to 1924 would have been natural fibers. There weren’t any synthetics at the time. You would have had wool, cotton, linen and silk. You would have found that the lower classes would have probably used linens and wools, which were less expensive. Cotton was a sort of wonder fiber. Up until then, it was just wools and linens, and—for those that could afford them—silks. Oftentimes, those silks were being produced overseas, and so they were imported and not accessible to the lower classes and even some of the middle classes. People who were of the working class or lower classes would be using fibers that would withstand a lot of wear and tear and wouldn’t necessarily be so fragile that they needed to be, uh, cleaned. Oftentimes, when you get up to the upper classes, you find that they were using more delicate fabrics that would be maintained by other people, not by the people who wore them. So you would have finer, delicate, imported
