Ready-to-Wear Clothes = Opportunity
By the 1890s both men and women were able to buy off-the-rack clothing in department stores and mail-order catalogs that was mass-produced in the same styles at different price levels. Americans began to dress more alike, obscuring the differences between them.
Industrial Production
Cutting stacks of fabric, 1920s
Mass production was key to affordable ready-to- wear clothing. Multiple copies of each piece of a garment were cut to patterns from stacks of fabric. As early as the 1890s, electric saws replaced long cutting knives (which had replaced scissors in the 1870s).
Because lighter-weight fabrics were easier to cut, the clothing industry abandoned heavier fabrics and fashion designers reconsidered traditional styles.
Department Store Shopping
Marshall Field, Chicago, 1910s
Department stores from large urban palaces to small-town emporiums offered clothes at a variety of fixed, no-haggle prices—often on multiple floors. Many also had bargain basements selling marked-down or overstocked garments.
The higher the floor, the higher the price. Bargains were in the basement!
T. W. Marse Department Store, Taylor, Texas, about 1925
By the 1920s sales of ready-to-wear clothing had reached unprecedented levels—spurred by rising incomes, easy credit, and the increasing social acceptability of spending money (and accumulating debt) on consumer goods that were not absolute necessities.
Anyone Can Dress Like a Movie Star
