Travel
International Travel
Fashion magazines gave detailed information on what clothing should be taken on holiday, whether at home or abroad. Fashion designers catered for travellers by creating resort collections. Holidays were an opportunity to wear more casual types of clothing, and there was also the opportunity for tourists to see dress that operated outside the Western fashion system.
Egypt
Travelling on Camels, 1933 – 1935
Title: [Travels to India and Egypt]
Date: (1933-1935)
Film-maker: Flavell Family
This clip shows the close proximity of British and indigenous cultures as tourists ride camels. Women wear floral and plain summer dresses, skirts and sweaters. A man wears a loose light coloured shirt and shorts. The local men wear smocks of a woven material. Vogue promoted African safaris in the mid-1920s. A Vogue cover, by illustrator A.E Marty, depicts a woman riding a zebra wearing a long green dress, a hat with a green grosgrain band and a veil to protect against mosquitoes. (Vogue (UK), late January 1926).
Africa
Female Tourist Posing Next to African Men, 1935
This film shows two African men in light-coloured loose robes and turbans. The third wears a fez and dark robe that is belted at the waist with knickerbocker-styled trousers that are gathered below the knee. The female tourist wears a light-coloured jacket and calf-length skirt suit with a contrasting dark blouse and two-tone brogues.
Despite great climatic differences, British dress codes were generally adhered to in Africa. Idina Sackville, who moved to Kenya in the 1920s, continued to wear Parisian eveningwear. However, Sackville flouted conventions and frequently wore trousers and even shorts by day, but this was met with disparagement (Frances Osborne, The Bolter (London: Virago Press, 2008) p.159).
