The Duke and Duchess of York on an official visit to Malta in 1927.

Meeting at the Marsa sports grounds in 1931.

The transition in women’s clothes from Victorian taste to what prevailed up to World War I was surely noticeable enough though not all that dramatic. It is what the war brought about in fashion that would qualify as revolutionary. 

Portrait of a lady in Malta, c. 1930.

A lady in Malta in front of her motor car, 1931.

Exotic ladies’ wear in Malta in the 1930s.

A standard ‘flapper’ dress in Malta, early 1930s.

Romantic leftovers from before the war but it was already the 1920s.

Most aesthetic norms changed radically: from elaborate to practical, from a loathing of nudity to ever more exposure. In clothes, the driving concepts of that era remain virtually the same to this day, 100 years later.

High glamour in Malta in the 1930s. Photo by the Grand Studio Malta

Simplicity replaced complexity. Less became beautiful. For the first time, any moderately skilled woman could sew her own dresses, perhaps with the aid of commercial paper patterns or pick up ready-to-wear garments from inexpensive clothes shops, dispensing with the services of pricey couturiers.

These were the Roaring Twenties when women clamoured more loudly still for equal rights – in education, in employment, in politics, in opportunities, in academia, in remuneration, in the claims of emotions. 

The suffragette movement slowly gained its objective of subverting male-dominated governance. It no longer seemed deviant for women to wear trousers or scandalous to frequent beaches in two-piece bathing suits, flirting with the boundaries of decency.

Changes in clothing advanced hand in hand with revolutions in music, in art, in the traditionally patriarchal workplace. It is hardly a coincidence that Charleston represented not only the trendy modern musical vogue but also the label of libera­ting femininity in clothes.

Maltese ladies in 'faldetta' in the 1930s. Photo by Geo Furst

Malta, though nowhere near the forefront of any cutting-edge fashion rebellion, cautiously joined in. If British service wives wore knee-length skirts and straight tops, and eschewed sculptural adornments, many of the locals, colonial minions to the core, felt left out not aping them. The only ones who hung tenaciously to the centuries-old, impractical, chastity belt and colourless għonnella were the adherents of strict traditional lay religious groupings.

A large gathering in front of the Mosta Rotunda c. 1925. Women would not be seen wearing specs in public.