From glittering beaded flapper dresses to silky pantsuits meant for entertaining at home, a new exhibit celebrates a time when women bobbed their hair, ventured out to speakeasies and dared to shorten their hemlines.

"Painting the Town: 1920s High Style" highlights the independent spirit of many women of the day, especially New York designer Regina Kobler, whose work is prominently featured in the small show at the University of North Texas' downtown Dallas exhibition space called Fashion on Main.The show's 10 outfits range from a long evening dress in lavender chiffon with a beaded tunic representing the earlier part of the decade, to the flapper dresses that symbolized the bold spirit that had taken hold by the late 1920s. There are four pantsuits designed – and worn – by Kobler, including a black velvet ensemble with bell sleeves featuring insets of floral velvet, and bell-bottomed pants with insets of the same pattern.

Kobler's niece, 83-year-old Inarose Bogen of Richardson, said her aunt was a self-confident woman whose designs were traditional but also had flair.

"Plain, neat and fancy – that was her motto," said Bogen, who sparked the museum's interest in the late designer with a phone call to curator Myra Walker.

Bogen can remember being at a Chinese-themed party at Kobler's house as a young girl, lanterns strung inside and out, her aunt wearing a Chinese ensemble. "She had a magnificent home, and she entertained lavishly," Bogen said.

Pieces from Kobler's scrapbook including photographs and newspaper advertisements are also featured in the exhibit.

"I wanted to show the progression of the decade," said Walker, director of the school's Texas Fashion Collection. For instance, it wouldn't have been unusual to see a mother in a long gown at a party while her daughter had a shorter hemline.

Even though flapper dresses were knee-length, it was still enough to raise eyebrows, said Kathleen Drowne, an associate English professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology who has written about the era.

"This is still coming off a generation where if a woman showed her ankle in public, that was something to look at twice," Drowne said.

Donna McWilliam/AP

Myra Walker, director of the University of North Texas' Texas Fashion Collection and curator of the exhibit, said she wanted to show how fashions changed in the 1920s.

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It was during the 1920s that movies began to spread Hollywood trends across the nation, and Prohibition pushed a lot of socializing underground, further encouraging more daring style.

Rosanna Hertz, a women's studies professor at Wellesley College, said flappers were in many ways rebels. "The kind of freedom that women wanted gets defined in fashion," she said.

Kobler's pantsuits show the way a fashionable hostess might have dressed while giving a party in her home, Walker said. She said women of the time wouldn't have worn pants for a night out – only in the privacy of a home.

The exhibit also has two evening coats and a cape, all with fur trim, displayed over elegant dresses to show how a woman of the decade would have dressed for a night at the theater or opera.

Kobler, who immigrated to the U.S. from what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1901, eventually established her business in New York, and by the 1920s business was flourishing. She had a luxurious home in Brooklyn's Manhattan Beach, traveled to Paris twice a year to see the couture shows and designed for the stage actress Maxine Elliott, according to Walker. However, Kobler's business crashed along with the stock market in 1929, never again regaining the prominence she once had.

Kobler eventually moved with her sister's family to Dallas, where she died at 69 in 1953.

Kobler's portfolio of styles ran deep, including bridal party dresses and even some ensembles that almost look contemporary, Walker said. Exhibit photos show a particularly unusual outfit: a long skirt unbuttoned to midthigh to show knickers underneath.

"She was willing to step out of the box," Walker said.

PLAN YOUR LIFE: "Painting the Town" runs through Dec. 18. For more info, click to www.tfc.unt.edu