Amazing 1920s Fashion: Silent Film is Brought to Life

Time travel back 100 years to 1920s Hollywood. Actresses model cloche hats and flapper dresses in a rare 1927 fashion film. Color grade restoration and upscale to 4K 60 fps with a newly created soundtrack. 1920s era style female voice-over was recreated by Polina Novikov

Hollywood actresses Corliss Palmer, Rachel Torres, Laura La Plante, Ruth Elder and Edna Murphy appear in this fashion feature. It is one of the very few surviving color fashion films from the 1920s era of The Great Gatsby. A rare showcase of genuine 1920s dresses and lovely colorful felt cloche hats sold by Sibley's department store in New York.

The quality of the original silent reel transfer to VHS was quite poor and I've endeavored to restore this priceless relic to as close to original quality as can be achieved.

The Film Restoration Process

When the footage is black and white, I restore them to life by a combination of manual frame by frame colorization as well as the use of deep exemplar-based video colorization techniques.
In this case the damaged silent film was an early example of the 'Technicolor' process.
The footage was cleaned of flicker and noise. Next the motion damage was stabilized and upscaled to 4K resolution using face recognition algorithms. The print was then color graded to remove the age related yellow cast and also to add depth. The original 16.6 frame rate was interpolated to a higher frame rate of 60fps.Finally a soundtrack was added using a female voice actor who recreated an authentic 1920s era female voiceover with a mid-Atlantic spoken style now long gone from American accents.

The story behind the footage:

Source: Personal Collection / Emgee Films
The film nitrate was first found and transferred by archivist Murray Glass who ran the EmGee Film Collection. After obtaining a VHS copy from Murray, and with his kind permission, I published an edit of his video transfer on this channel in 2009 and subsequently interviewed Mr Glass for Glamourdaze about his work. He sadly passed away in 2019. RIP.

The film, entitled Fashion News, was made using Technicolor Process 2 by Fashion Features Inc. They continued making these features till 1932. This early color was achieved by simultaneously photographing two consecutive frames of a black-and-white film behind red and green filters. The Technicolor process was finally perfected in 1932, using a beam-splitting optical cube, combined with with the camera lens, to expose three black-and-white films.

[Wyattinous]

20s fashion really was a moment. Always love the cap, curly hair and makeup combo in that era.

[astheworldturns]

The girls are gorgeous without being posy, they looked like they were having fun, and the hats and makeup, absolutely beautiful.

[princesssparkle]

Fashion of the late 20s is so beautiful. I like the big shapes in the designs

[cloudypianos]

Hard to believe this was just 100 years ago, a blip in history

[CaroL-nfrs]

So interesting as well to hear the models’ names. Brings a reality to it that these were real people who were vibrant and enjoying fashion and are now no longer here

[jdwrink]

“flies to a luncheon” As one does, in your cute hat and scarf.

[irdpljd]

Gorgeous colors. Everything was so well made and innovative. This video is so much fun.

[limmoblack]

Just a big thank you for doing this for us enthusiasts of 20' 30's style.

[stischer]

My mother was 17 at that time and I have a photo in front of their house with her cloche hat, and her brothers with their boaters.

[robertcavalluzzi]

Men's fashion of the 1920s was very elegant as women's fashion

[cdl]

It is impressive how the different textures of the fabrics are apparent in the restored video, and the actress has done an amazing good job of imitating a 1920s American accent.

[WeatherGirlWares]

I just kept saying to myself, "Ah, I would wear that" to nearly every outfit.

[scorpionic-night]

i love the "that's all!"

[creevision]

It's always interesting to see hats like these that were in fashion during this era or specific items that are in fashion during any era.

[Lupolino]

Thanks a lot for your tremendous work and the impressing results you achieved 👍👍👍

[mtlicq]

Couple reasons for the fashions then: 1922 discovery of King Tut's tomb, ancient-egyptology / mummy style influences were all the rage in fashion, just in time to protest old ways that were blamed for leading up to the world war, and the cloche hats sort of mimicked the wrap on a mummy's head, as did the simplified narrow dresses. I love these pretty ladies! 💋

[suzyf]

So gorgeous! Totally lovely thank you! ❤❤❤❤

[manusha]

Ahhh brings back memories of Evelyn Waugh and PG Wodehouse ❤ such an elegant time in history, despite being wedged between 2 world wars

[cindybetten]

I love your sign off! And of course the videos!

[ЛарисаЯковлева-ее]

Какие красивые шляпки. Мода 20 годов прекрасна.