Women’s clothing in the 1920s reflected dizzying social change on an unprecedented scale. From Paris and London to New York and Hollywood, the period following the Great War offered the modern woman a completely new style of dressing.

But it was America in the 1920s that provided the creative inspiration for a Europe still staggering out of the fog of war. From the East coast to the West, the United States was producing icons on an industrial scale— from stars of the silver screen to skyscrapers, and it was the impact on women’s fashion that has left us with arguably the most tangible and enduring notion of what the Jazz Age was.

These incredible photos come via the archive of James Abbe (1883-1973). His photographs documented the world of Hollywood stars and he is credited with creating the modern-day concept of celebrity through his portraits of stage and screen stars such as Gilda Gray, the Dolly Sisters, and Louise Brooks.

One of the leading American celebrity photographers of the 1920s, Abbe moved to New York in 1917 and quickly established an international reputation as a stage and film photographer. His photographs were soon being published in Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Ladies Home Journal.

He visited Hollywood in 1920 and 1922 and took portraits of Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin and even found time to direct a film for silent film director and founder of Keystone Studios, Mack Sennett.

After working for seven months on location in Italy on the Ronald Colman – Lillian Gish film, The White Sister (1923), Abbe switched his base to Paris where he photographed French stage and revue stars, introducing them to a world-wide audience through his picture syndication. As the decade and its fashions waned he returned increasingly to photo-journalism, but left behind a body of work that defines classical Hollywood cinema and its fashions, tastes and imagery.