The Golden Flapper

About this work

The outline of the profile is what you notice first, and the flat graphic style makes it sharper still. Warm tan skin and dark lips stand out against the black ground, while the glossy bob, cut with a straight fringe, frames the face like a helmet. From there the eye rises along the gold beaded headband to its jewelled ornament and on up the tall pale plume, the one soft, feathery shape in a design otherwise built from clean edges. A long beaded tassel earring draws the gaze downward again, past the strands of pearls to the dark dress with its gold geometric pattern. Close up you can count the beads and the pearls; from across a room the figure becomes a bold silhouette in black, tan, cream and gold, unmistakably of its decade.

The bob was the haircut of the flapper decade, and it was a statement. The dancer Irene Castle had already cut her hair short around 1915, but it was in the early 1920s that the style spread rapidly among young women and became a symbol of a new independence. F. Scott Fitzgerald turned the moment into fiction in Bernice Bobs Her Hair, a short story published in The Saturday Evening Post in May 1920, in which a shy young woman is dared into having her hair bobbed. Beaded headbands worn low on the forehead, feather plumes and long strands of pearls completed the evening look, made for dancing in short dresses that let both the jewellery and the dancer move freely.

A dressing table, powder room or bedroom is the obvious home, though it also brings Gatsby glamour to a home bar. Blush pink, champagne, black and deep green walls all flatter the warm skin tones and gold. A slim gold or black frame suits the flat graphic style; a cream mat lifts it, a black one makes it dramatic. Hang it beside The Deco Peacock for a pair of 1920s-style posters, or with Golden Girl with a Pearl Earring, another portrait where a pearl catches the light against black. Warm lamplight flatters it most. Printed from the 7168 × 10752 px file, it stays sharp to about 60 × 90 cm, a bold size above a vanity. A Frame TV version with a gallery mat comes with it.