Gibson Girl

Yeah.

So The Flapper would come along and kick, uh, what was known as the Gibson Girl to the curb.

Uh, the Gibson Girl during the 1910s was, uh, created and popularized from an illustrator named Charles Dana Gibson.

And this was, like, if you think of the Edwardian sort of, uh, corset-wearing, uh, updo hair-wearing, uh, choker, you know, like, um, dress that goes, skirt that goes all the way to the, past the ankle and a, and like a choker up to under the chin.

Mm-hmm.

That's the Gibson Girl look, and The Flapper came along and said, "No, no, no, no, we want to have more fun than that."

They did.

And they did.

Look, let me just tell you, I did try to get my hair into that wonderful Gibson Girl hairstyle that's throughout my brilliant career for this video.

It feels like the Gibson Girl was the OG messy bun just with a lot more hair and it looks...

so stunning in this series, and I wish I could replicate it.

But your girl got stringy, dry hair, so it was not gonna happen for me.

I understand that the Edwardian period is in the UK.

You know, a lot of fashion or furniture or domestic spaces were really similar because of manufacturing and that sort of thing in that time period, whether that be in France or Germany or the U.S., Using terms like Victorian or Edwardian, yes, they are specific to the UK and it's important to note that.

But it also means that a lot of like cultural imagery that people would think to do with things like dress or like the Gibson girl hairstyle that would have been across the US and Australia and Europe to use that as kind of an overarching theme.

term to talk about some of the things that we're seeing visually that people connect with.

Because even as a child, Evelyn had the kind of looks that turned heads.

By the time she arrived in New York, she was already a working model, posing for photographers and celebrated artists, most famously Charles Dana Gibson, an illustrator known for his popular Gibson Girl drawings.

And if you were a young woman in the 1900s, you wanted to look like a Gibson Girl.

Back then, they were the fantasy ideal of the beautiful and independent American woman.

The Gibson Girl look was aspirational, artificial, and personified by Evelyn Nesbitt.

And so, Evelyn's face was everywhere.

Magazines, calendars, ads.

And they literally used to write Paris models.

which is literally like the newest thing in paris they called it paris model this is what everyone should copy photography was becoming a huge thing before photography there were illustrations so now we're switching from illustrations to actual photographs a girl wearing the dress so not only can you see um the actual dress that you want to copy you can also see how she did her hair how she looks how her posture is you can see everything and copy it Instagram guys like literally this is the birth of Instagram we also have department stores it was huge at the time we had department stores before that but in the Edwardian era that's when it really boomed we have Selfridges, Harrods, Galerie Lafayette, Bergdorf Goodman there was also mail order catalogs even if you didn't live in London or Paris or these major cities you could also get them mailed like fashion was becoming very accessible trends were like circling around they were spreading around faster and easier we also have the gibson girl the gibson girl was an illustration created by american artist charles dana gibson so she created this visual idea of the modern woman so how a modern american woman would look like tiny waist always with the tiny waist exaggerated curves she had enormous hair she was very confident socially visible she was stylish and she was independent so it became so famous at the time to the point that there's this girl there's this actress called camille clifford she became famous for playing that role in in the london stage for now we can see there's many many things are happening at the same time we have fashion Circulating a lot of things are happening.

We have illustrations.

So we have the Gibson girl and then we have theater.

OK, theater is involved as well.

So we have her playing the Gibson girl in the theater.

We have celebrities and actresses and these ideas were all merging together.

OK, this is when we start creating something new.

Like, not, um, not falling over.

A thing I really-- I didn't get to write about in the book, but I was reading a lot about Gibson Girl hair and turn of the century ideas of hair.

Yes.

Yeah.

All right.

And then Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlor has the rest in chocolate coming back.

Through November 12th.

These dates are really...