1920s Original One-of-a-Kind (OOAK) Real Sepia Photos of Flapper Era Flapper Young Woman Girl Swimmer in Revealing See-Through Knit One-piece Swimwear Bathing Suit
The swimmer(s) in these photos may be members of the IAC - Illinois Athletic Club or MAC Missouri Athletic Club training for regional championships or even olympic consideration.
Dimensions: ~5x7"
Taken / shot by famous photojournalist, Robert Froelich.
average to very good condition - watermark only added to scans uploaded to this listing.
Flapper Fashion
Designers like Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli and Jean Patou ruled flapper fashion. Jean Patou’s invention of knit swimwear inspired a freer, more relaxed silhouette, while the knitwear of Chanel and Schiaparelli brought no-nonsense lines to women’s clothing. Madeleine Vionnet’s bias-cut designs (made by cutting fabric against the grain) emphasized the shape of a woman’s body in a more natural way.
The Illinois Athletic Club built a foundation producing world record holders and Olympians and dominating American national team championships starting with its first team in 1914. IAC swimming athletes competed in Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) nationally organized competitions. Many got their start at the Chicago Athletic Association (CAA), the city’s principal athletic club in the 1890s, which sponsored swimming, football, track and field, and boxing. Its first competitive swimming team was formed in 1894, and at first the swimmers all came from the club’s regular membership.
Russell Froelich, Sr. (1890–1958) was a pioneer of both early aviation and aerial photography who took thousands of lasting images of the St. Louis region for the city’s newspaper outlets from 1911 to the 1950s, helped the war effort in WWI with aerial mapping, was a color photography innovator and even invented a monoplane.
The monoplane Froelich designed and built in 1911 pioneered the fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane (in contrast to biplanes of the era) which became the most common structure of aircraft after the 1930s. In his twenties, he began both designing and helping to build airplanes with early local flyers, such as Tom Benoist of the Benoist Aircraft Company, leading to the role as official photographer for the manufacturer.
American entry into WWI led Froelich to put his talents and skills to wartime use. He began taking aerial photographs from wing-mounted cameras that he improvised to fit given situations and flight conditions, helping the US Army Signal Corps develop terrain maps of Europe.
After the War, Froelich worked as a beat photographer for St. Louis newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and the St. Louis Star. He eventually managed the photography team which gave him access to a wide range of subject matter and the ability to experiment with action photography and the evolution of color techniques
*OOAK = One of a Kind