Dress, c. 1925, crepe, pearl, and glass, Gift of Mary Ruth Hoyt, 1981.5.22.
This delicate, knee-length “flapper” style dress is machine-made with hand sewn pearl and glass bugle beads. Parisian fashion designers, influenced by Cubism in the early 1920s, began to make dresses such as these, with clean lines, angular forms, and loose fits. The styles began to permeate fashions of the everyday woman across America with the popularity of mail order catalogs, such as the Sears catalog, that sold cheaper versions of designer styles. This garment was worn by the donor’s grandmother, East Tennessean Elizabeth Stone Hoyt, to a function at Maryville College and was accessorized with a turquoise ostrich feather fan, also in the McClung Collection (1981.5.69).