Mille Baisers: History: The Early 1920s

All right, back to the history! So, as we saw, there were precedents to these 1920s cards in the preceding decades-- lovely women and loving couples carefully posed, hand-tinted or dyed with bright colours. However, there is still significant visual difference between this, from 1915:

and this, from 1924:

How did they go from one to the other?

So far my answer, I'll admit, is incomplete. World War One definitely accelerated changes in society, as we can see in some of the poses on postcards, and the differences between 1914 and 1924 certainly go far beyond postcards. I suspect the taste for bright colours we see in the 1920s and early 1930s cards was affected by other cultural factors; indeed I've read that the 20s saw something of a "craze for colour."

I do, however, have some visuals to fill in the gap. These postcards were sent between 1920 and 1923 by a fellow called Victor to his girlfriend Pauline. Though they were sent in Luxembourg, they are made in France. I find them interesting because the images are still very similar to those of the 1900s and 1910s, but the colouring is more in line with what we see in the 1920s-- the brightness and the airbrushed spots of colour. My sample size is small and based on the taste of one couple, but still it is interesting to see the progression.

personal collection

This card bears the mark of publishing house PC Paris, the most prominent publisher of these cards through the 1920s and 1930s. The numbers they assign to cards appear to be at least roughly in chronological order; 60 is the lowest I've seen (and the date of this card--1920--is also the earliest I've seen for a PC Paris card).