The "New Woman" attends college

The "New Woman" cared not only about her appearance, but about education and her personal and professional development too. A larger number of women were winning the right to attend university or college. Some were obtaining a professional education, often at prestigious all-female colleges, and becoming lawyers, doctors, journalists and professors. Women finally went beyond the borders of the home and switched from the reproductive labor (housekeeping, cooking and child raising) to the productive work in economic sector. New activities demanded new, more suitable, clothes - the shirtwaists and tailored suits came into fashion.

The "New Woman" showed interest not only in enjoying and studying arts, but also in developing her talents in various artistic fields as a way of self-expression. Women changed the passive role for an active one: women actually created art pieces and a new generation of women artists had emerged.

Those avant-garde women were open to the radical changes and extraordinary solutions in fashion. They began to replace large hats with wide brims for smaller hats with flat brims. They introduced the bobbed hair in 1909, before it became a fashion trend of the 1920s, and often supplemented hairstyle with postiches, small individual wigs, curls, or false buns.

1920: The flapper, a revolutionary icon

The "New Woman" of the 1920s rejected the pieties (and often the politics) of the older generation, smoked and drank in public, celebrated the sexual revolution, and embraced consumer culture. The way for future iconic image, the flapper, was paved. She was a “new breed” of young Western woman wearing trousers, short skirts and bobbed hair, listening to jazz and flaunting disdain for what was considered to be an acceptable behaviour. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.

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• COMPAL (Compte i Palatchi), Advertising photograph for "Lápiz Termosan", undated
• Josep Masana, Blanca Negri, between 1920-1940
• Ismael Smith, Fashion plate, circa 1913
• Antoni Arissa, Untitled, undated
• Emili Vilà, Untitled, undated

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