Skyscrapers, Streamlining, and the Machine Age

After the hectic gyrations of cubist-inspired "Jazz-Age" design, with its multiple perspectives and jutting angles, came the less frenetic styles of the Machine Age. Designers looked to the new American forms of stepped skyscrapers and streamlined trains, planes, and automobiles. The Bauhaus in Germany and other European centers formulated theories that discarded surface ornament in favor of integral design. From these inspirations, clothing and textile designers took the plane geometry of architecture, the bullet-curves of functional machines, and the textures of modern materials. Fashion again began to focus on form and to use intricate bias cuts to reveal or accentuate the body beneath the garments.