The Power of Dress: Donning 1930s Hollywood Replication Gowns

During the 1930s, Hollywood enticed women to purchase film costume replicas and product tie-ins in their local department stores via a cooperative marketing campaign. Hollywood replication gowns were inexpensive, available to consumers of modest means, and offered a way to explore the glamour of stardom through dress. They were available in a variety of styles, but the Letty Lynton dress was the most famous of its genre, and its success solidified the wide-shouldered look of the 1930s. The prevalence of similarly designed gowns establishes it as a cultural sub-meme of Hollywood replications. One example, housed in the Alameda Historical Museum (AHM), was analyzed using the material culture methodology of E. M. Fleming. The study presents a case in which women of this era experimented with the percolating sense of self-determination through Hollywood dress replications, unique to how women express that today.