Ready-to-Wear Outfits

I was reading an article over at www.NPR.org about eerily beautiful Australian mugshots from the twenties, and was struck by something unwittingly poignant in a description of the photographs. Claire O’Neill said this:
Together these faces show the seamy side of Sydney — or, as Australians call it, “Sin City.” Jaded veterans were back from WWI, Doyle says, cocaine was rampant and a large percentage of the working class had immigrated from Great Britain. “Modernity swept through Sydney in the ’20s,” he says, which also shows in the clothing: Men were wearing three-piece suits and women were dressed to the nines in ready-to-wear outfits from department stores. It almost looks like something you’d see in a modern fashion spread.

Peter Doyle caught me completely off guard when he mentioned “ready-to-wear outfits” because that’s something that a 1980’s child like myself has always accepted as “the way clothing is done” growing up. Throughout my entire life, stores have carried clothes that are meant to go together, and, if anything, the novel concept recently has been to sell clothing with the intent to mix and match them. It significantly changes my impression of things to think of a time when complete outfits were new.
Here is a photograph from the article.

Image
You can read the full text here:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/03/16/134560009/eerily-beautiful-1920s-australian-mugshots?sc=tw&ft=1&f=97635953

Peter Doyle’s book is called “Crooks Like Us.”

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