The summer of 1922 was a hot one, and in New York at least, those who could fled the city

to escape temperatures climbing into the mid-90s that made even the current lighter women's

fashions uncomfortable. And for men, the still-required hats and ties made a muggy day

intolerable in the steamy city.

1922 was unquestionably an interesting year, with important cultural eras beginning and ending all

at once. In Europe, the great chronicler of Paris's bell-apacist society, Marcel Pust,

had died. In America, Judy Garland, the girl who was to send

everyone's hopes and dreams over the rainbow

for evermore was born.

The country was dedicated to celebrating its

Democratic heroes, and in May of that year,

the moving and patriotic Lincoln Memorial was finally completed and opened in Washington, D.C. for a reverential public.

America was changing.

The country had made it through a war, and the new world that followed kicked so many of the 19th century social customs that had once

defined it to the curb in favor of loosened morals, bobbed hair, brighter lipsticks,

and the sounds to come of Duke Ellington, and a sense that a whole new party was just beginning

that was never going to stop.

Women now had the vote, but yes, there still was prohibition,

but didn't that just make drinking and dark, sultry speak-easies even more fun?

The rigid rules that once governs society, that is to say, that once had determined just

what society was, didn't work anymore. These old ideas that functioned to exclude, not include,

applied to a gilded world that the new generation ignored or was more than happy to forget ever had existed.

...