We live in a world filled with influencers. Fashionable individuals plastered all over the web and social media channels sharing their recommendations for style, food, travel in the hopes that you will elevate their message and brands.

However there have always been individuals living as arbiters of taste, in the summer of 2024, Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, New York is hosting Influencers; 1920s Fashion and the New Woman an exhibition that examines 1920s fashion—and the shifts in society that allowed women more freedom and control—through the lens of three distinct “influencers” of the era: Irene Castle, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Coco Chanel.

Most of the garments in this exhibition come from Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology, Fashion + Textile Collection, a program that pioneered women’s improvement and education, and set up Fashion Design as a viable career choice.

Explore the legacy of Castle, Millay, and Chanel on the way women lived, dressed and presented themselves through what they wore.

Irene Castle

Initially famous for her dancing career with his husband, Vernon in the 19-teens, Castle re-invented her career, away from dancing, following her husband’s death during World War I. Castle’s style was apparent in the short silent films that she starred in, and she was hailed as “The best-known and best-dressed woman in America”. Using the Castle name, she created a ready to wear fashion line inspired by her own style. This was the first “celebrity fashion line” in the United States, which set up the ability for others to follow in her dancing footsteps.

In the photo, you can see a collection of dresses representative of Irene Castle influence, from her dramatic silver headdress and dance outfit, to the ready to wear clothing for the everyday woman. A clip of one of her silent featuring her and her husband plays in the background. In the 1920s, a woman could see her, and be her through clothes.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay was the symbol of the free-spirited modern woman in the first decades of the 20th century.” A prolific writer and the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1923, Millay lived a bohemian lifestyle and was the ‘It’ girl of Greenwich Village, where she wore clothing that went against gender norms, embraced foreign cultures, and reflected her intellectualism.

This collection of clothing represents the bohemian and ethnic styles that she favored, and others began to copy. From menswear-inspired outfits to Chinoiserie and eastern-inspired tie dyes; Millay influenced many “new” women in the 1920s. Millay’s clothing for the exhibition is on loan from her home ‘Steepletop’, which is now a historic house museum dedicated to her literary legacy.

Coco Chanel

The 1920s is synonymous with the Flapper Style and French fashion designer and lifestyle influencer, Coco Chanel “championed simple elegance that appealed to the more active woman of the 1920s”. The invention of Chanel No. 5 perfume was integral to the flapper culture as it could cover up the smell of sweat from dancing and partying all night long.

This grouping of beaded dresses, including Anna Gould’s pink Agnes dress (far left) and Chanel’s ‘Little Black Dress’ in the glass case are a special representation of a type of garment that is hard to find in such good condition today, as the dancing, sweating, and other chemicals of the time have contributed to the disintegration and destruction of the fabrics on many couture fashion flapper style gowns.