What is this style of jacket?

[Two Types]

This is from 1937. It appears to be a cross between a dinner jacket and a WW2 German tank crew jacket. Any ideas what it is? Was it a common style briefly? Was it just a style used by dancers? Anyone seen one before?

 

[Edward]

Looks like a tails-inspired, evening wear version of one of those jackets a matador wears. Flamenco dancers? Looking again, though, I'm not sure if it is bolero length, or just really tight below the waist. Presumably if it is long and tight, that's to stop it flapping and getting in the way of the dancer?

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

I have some 1930s magazines that mention special suits for dancing. They were discussed to be worn by "normal" dancers, not just show acts. A "reform" suit. Maybe it is one of them?

 

[Two Types]

I think you are probably correct: Ernst & Lotte were Austrian so the German fashion for specially made short jackets for dancing would be a logical conclusion. Cheers.

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

"Reform-Kleidung" and the "Tanzanzug" seemed to be a short trend. Tailors refused to make this crazy suits.
Here they make fun about american "Reform Kleidung"

And this german version seems to be inspired by bavarian "Trachten"

The pictures were published in "Der Schneidermeister" 1930-31

BTW The discussion is all about clothes for the common people. Dancing costumes for professional dancers don't follow the strict rules of tailoring.

 

[herringbonekid]

Lotte Berk had an interesting life:

"She was born Liselotte Heymansohn in Cologne to a Russian father and German mother, both Jewish. Her father owned a chain of quality menswear shops, and as a child she wore a Russian cape and was chauffeured around in a six-seater Mercedes. She was eight when her mother died of a stroke, perhaps sowing the seeds of her legendary emotional control and physical willpower.

Caught up in the rarefied artistic culture of that pre-war era, she became a modern ballet dancer despite her father's opposition - in those days, the profession was regarded almost as prostitution. In the 30s, she fled the Nazis with her dancer husband Ernst and infant daughter Esther. Ernst had an English passport, and they set up home in one room in Sussex Gardens; the maid slept in the bed, the couple on the floor and their child in the suitcase.

To earn a living, Berk modelled at Heatherley's School of Fine Art, danced at Covent Garden for Marie Rambert, and entertained troops as part of ENSA, but her sort of dancing did not appeal in London and, by the 1950s, feeling that a female dancer's career should not be prolonged into middle age, she began to develop, with the help of an osteopath, her dancer's training regime as the basis for a series of exercises that produced the taut musculature and perfect posture of a dancer's body"

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

Oh dancers often have the most interesting life stories. Did you read about the tragic dead of Isadora Duncan? Stranger than fiction.

 

[herringbonekid]

i never met the dark haired Jewish - Russian / French / German - immigrant dancer of my dreams. that's my tragedy.