Chronicle of a transgressive woman: garçonne fashion in Lima, (1919-1930)

Abstract

During the 1920s, the multiple social and economic changes that linked women to the world of work and participation in public life led to a great transformation of clothing. It gave way to the emergence of garçonne fashion, and with it, a simple and functional clothing proposal considered “masculinized”. Indeed, it will be a dress practice personified in an image of a transgressive woman. This female, criticized for her behavior and fashions, will be seen as a usurper of male privileges; as well as branded as independent, superficial and carefree about the domestic and family environment. By the way, from the newspapers, magazines and photographs of the time, it is intended to illustrate a context where these Lima garçonnes abandoned envisioning an "adventurous security" from their reading of fashion as a form of social expression and a space for negotiation of cultural freedoms and social roles.