I grew up in the 1950s, like others commenting here. Here's what I remember: Average ladies wore deeper pink lipstick or softer shades of red, no foundation, a little swipe of powder to blot any shine on the face or nose. At most dark brown eyebrow pencil (black was considered too harsh) was applied to fill in sparse spots in the brows, no rouge or eye shadow was used. Only movie stars used eyeliner, we didn't know it existed. There was a product called "Dark Eyes" for women with pale lashes, that dyed them more or less permanently until they naturally fell out. Who knows what was in it. Clear nail polish was worn on short nails. The really pretty teenagers, not us, experimented with colored nail polish on fingernails (and sometimes toes). They occasionally used eyelash curlers followed by a light swoop of vaseline. Mascara was considered quite glamorous and spent most of its time sitting unused in the top dresser drawer, to be saved for "someday". Popular fragrances for teens were Jungle Gardenia, Tweed, Tabu, White Shoulders and Windsong. Moms wore Evening in Paris, Arpege, Chanel No.5 and My Sin. The original Evening in Paris was marvelous. We saved Mom's empty bottles to sniff for a mood lifter. Avon's Cotillion is an old-style fragrance that smells like the lighter summer colognes ladies wore back then. Little girls got tiny bottles of kiddie cologne from the dime store, which they dabbed on a couple times and forgot about. Cough. Nylons with seams were always worn with skirts and dresses, even in high summer, and held up with garters attached to a longline or panty girdle. When you got home from church in August, you took off the nylons and girdle and padded around in old shoes with a cool drink until the roast chicken was ready. Waitresses and nurses wore special nylons that had a 4" extension of the darker, knitted heel going up the back where it showed. This made them more durable if you walked all day. They were ugly and worn by no-nonsense working women. For a really small waist, you wore a waist cincher called a merry widow, named after the operetta. It closed with hooks and eyes. Full or half slips were always worn under dresses, and a lady didn't dare let a glimpse of that slip show below her hemline. I'll assume that everyone here knows about bullet or torpedo bras, with the stitching that goes around and around and around... Flatter girls padded theirs with toilet tissue or cotton, or stitched a seam widthwise across the center to take the cups in. The stitching could be picked out later if there were further developments. Where we lived, all the girls filled out eventually. For church, special occasions, or Saturday nights out, full skirts with nylon net can-can slips came out of the closet. My sister had a slip with 5 gathered layers, each one a different deep pastel. What fun I had with that! It took a good while to iron those full skirts, so you wouldn't wear them every day. They also took up more room when you sat or moved, so you wouldn't wear them to work, school or on the bus. Pleated skirts, moderately full, gathered skirts, a-lines or straight skirts with a kick pleat for walking ease were more common. Circular poodle skirts had actual felt poodles appliqued on them. (We thought they looked dopey, but would try them on for a laugh.). I never saw anyone wear a poodle skirt outside of the movies. Felt was not considered sufficiently durable for clothing and difficult to spot clean. Shorter slacks called pedal pushers or capris helped make steamy days bearable. Pedal pushers stopped about 1" below the knee, capris tapered and stopped about 7" to 9" above the ankle. Capris looked stylish, but they really pulled up on your calves when you sat down. Fabric was woven cotton, not knitted, so there wasn't any give. These were worn with flats. Heels were too racy, and only for movie stars. Short fuzzy pants in Dr.Scholl's moleskin pink, called snuggies, were worn under skirts in the wintertime to keep your legs warm above the knees. Hideous things. If the wind flipped your skirt up, you were mortified. Thank goodness opaque tights came along later. Women wore black rubber overshoes in the winter called stadium boots. These zipped up over the ankles and had a cheesy little strip of fake fur around the top. Some were shaped to fit loosely around the high heels of dress shoes. Most were flat and were worn in the 40s as well. Young ladies wore plain dress flats, penny loafers, sneakers, low dressy heels, or plain 3" heels when they reached their teens. Except for sneakers, soles were made from real leather and were repaired when they wore out. Little girls wore Mary Janes. Saddle shoes weren't really that popular, because they made your feet look big and clunky. Grandmas wore "nun shoes", black WWII lace-up oxfords with Cuban heels. Women wore lower 2" heels when doing housework and 3" heels in a plain style known as pumps when they left the house. They never stepped out of the front door without lipstick. An average day at home was spent indoors without any makeup whatsoever. In my very ordinary Chicago neighborhood at least. There were some odd little fads every year, like plastic pop beads that snapped together to make any size necklace in cream or orange, large muffs in the winter, clear plastic peeptoe slingbacks and purses that folded two flaps into the top instead of snapping with a clasp. Check out the delightful movie musical, "Bells are Ringing", for the last one. The purse had a flat bottom so you could stand a cup of coffee and a danish in it. At one point, hoopskirts were all the rage for formal wear, ala "The King and I". With formal wear, women tended to keep their shoulders covered, if only with a cap sleeve or bertha. A neckline might be wider, but cleavage was covered as well. Women and girls only went hatless in their own immediate neighborhoods. Shopping downtown, going to work, church or restaurants called for a hat and gloves (white cotton in summer). A good hat could be worn for years, even decades. My mother had a wide, flat picture hat in French blue pleated chiffon that she wore forever over her silver hair. It seems strange now, but back then mature, older women were the trend setters. You weren't considered truly desirable and sophisticated until you were 30. Those women had a remote and experienced air that was tantalizing to boys and men. They could get any male to do anything without hesitation. Fashion magazines were dream books and did not reflect real life. Women didn't worry about their weight until the 1960s, they simply bought a bigger size if they needed it. Most women weren't really obese, because housework and shopping without a second car kept them active. On Monday you got up early to do laundry at the laundromat or in the basement. If you only had a clothesline for drying, the towels froze like boards in the winter and had to be ironed out. On Tuesday everything was ironed: sheets, pillowcases, underwear (even bras and undershirts), hankies, etc. No disposable diapers, they were cloth, washed at home in Ivory Flakes and bleach. Men's collars and cuffs were stiffened with liquid starch cooked on the stove. In the winter, woolens that needed cleaning were gathered up to go to the dry cleaner every Saturday. Coats, jackets and anything dark got a once over with the lint/clothes brush before you left the house. Shoes were polished at least once a week. White shoes were treated to liquid polish in a glass bottle, applied with a 3/4" fuzzy round dauber on the end of a twisted wire. Ladies went to the local hair salon once a week for a shampoo and set, and carefully slept in a hairnet every night, no tossing and turning. To save money, you might wash your hair at home and put it up in pincurls, using two crisscrossed bobby pins to hold them until they dried. Permanent waves were very popular, in spite of being an ordeal. Most women wore their hair in a short style very similar to what Queen Elizabeth wore to her wedding. Longer hair was considered impractical for married ladies, and was usually reserved for teens and little girls, who endured rag curls. Curling irons were only about 1/2" thick and heated over a stove burner, no electric cords on them back then. My mother still wore finger waves into the 50s. The old German spinsters next door dressed in circa-WWI styles with Mother Hubbard aprons. Their Sunday best French heels fastened at the side with a buttonhook and were to DIE for. Old fashions, like spit curls, rats, and bowl haircuts on kids tended to linger as long as the older generation was around. Just like today. I was in grade school in the 1950s and couldn't wait to wear all those lovely, feminine, grown-up dresses once I reached high school. Imagine my disappointment when the 60s arrived with cheap-looking mini skirts that made us all look like dancing soup cans. Back then retro and vintage were not options for young people. I never saw a Goodwill thrift shop until the 1960s. We wore out our clothes, removed the buttons to save in a jar and cut them into cleaning rags. (Good scraps from sewing were made into doll clothes and pincushions for everyday gifts.) When the rags were utterly used up, we traded a clean bag of cotton remnants to the old ragman for a bar of soap. He would drive his weary horse and cart home and sell his gleanings to a wholesaler, to be made into rag paper. Anything salvageable he put on his back. The ragman didn't just deal in rags, he wore them. Kids loved to pet his horse and would run outside whenever they heard the shout, "Rags 'n iron!" Anyway, sorry for the ramble, just wanted to pass on a few details before they're lost forever. ( I did leave a few more comments later at the end of this section. The memories just keep flooding back once you start.)
Not rambling at all! Thank you so much for sharing, things are so different now and it's so interesting to hear a first hand account of what life and fashion was like back then! If you have any other stories from your childhood we'd all love to hear them!
Its actually quite sad, as in many pictures marilyn was pregnant or it was shortly after an unsuccsessfull pregnancy due to her suffering from endometriosis...
I think it’s also important that she pointed out a lot of women were also malnourished from WWII like Audrey Hepburn she wanted to gain weight but couldn’t due to her body changes while being malnourished and growing up in WWII and clearly Marilyn didn’t have this issue as she had a fuller figure when compared to these women.
@@5050TM Not to my knowledge from the interviews I’ve seen and from interviews from people who know her (I am a massive fan) she thought she was too slim and flat chested. Her son Sean said she used to eat lots of food and loved things like pasta and chocolate. I’ve tried her chocolate cake recipe it’s really good. She did say she resented food because during the war what little food she did have tasted awful. Which makes sense when your eating things like thistles and other weeds to get by.
Funny thing is how my Grandmother told me that she only wore a ponytail until she got married (at 16) then she put her hair up. My Grandfather was in the Navy so if he was off and not at home she would put it up ( in a ponytail) and if he was home at leave she would set her hair and pin it up. She explained that most of her friends did the same thing. If the husband wasn't home and you were chasing multiple children under the age of 5 you would not want your hair in your face. And if he had a regular 9 to 5 job then you would probably keep your curlers in until he was getting home from work. However there was more men that traveled for work and not home for days, weeks, months and it wasn't a big issue to look like a million bucks. My other Grandmother also got married at 17 and she kept her hair cut short soon after she was married and had her first child (my father) and your right most women had almost a boy cut because it was easier. Both said that they wore powder every day but not much else except chapstick or a little lipstick for fancy.
Marilyn's claimed measurements of a 22 inch waist and 35 inch hips weren't her natural measurements. The 22 inch waist was likely achieved with shapewear and girdles. A modelling agency listed Marilyn's measurements as 36-24-34, which seems more realistic based on pictures I've seen of her natural waist. Also, those measurements were taken when she was younger and thinner. There's lots of photos of her looking a bit more "plump". She'd probably be a US size 4 or 2 these days. I think when people say "curvy" they often mean hourglass figure and not super skinny, which is what Marilyn was. Now of course she was never "plus size", but she was also never super skinny. I've looked at hundreds of photos of her and I haven't seen one where she looks painfully thin.
I'm guessing that people in 70 years will most likely look back at us now and think everyone dressed like the Kardashians or other celebs and did their makeup like Kim K and James Charles. I think all generations must get fashion sterotyped.
I remember in the late 90s when the 60s were back in a big way, and my mom asked me, "why is everyone dressed like a nerd?!" Apparently the particular 60s "look" designers chose to resuscitate was what only the dorks wore when my mom was young, lol. We also debated which 90's music would make it to the "oldies station" in 30 years. My bet was on Fiona Apple (wrong) and hers was "that 98 Degrees bubblegum crap" (ehh, kinda!) Turns out to be Nirvana, who knew.
I'm laughing just imagining people on Halloween in like 3023 barely even able to talk because they overdid it on the duck lips and wearing revealing clothing like "yeah, this is a TOTAL 21st century accurate outfit!"
Neither is exactly an apt comparison. Emo hasn't really evolved (which is kind of the point of it) and scene was a natural outgrowth of 90s rave style (and has now evolved again into the e-girl). Hipster is probably the better comparison tbh: as it didn't really grow out of another style or evolve into anything either. Although a lot of people forget this, Hipster style was actually associated with a type of music: country rock. And, just like rockabilly, Hipster wasn't simply a style of dress but a complete lifestyle: and one which Hollywood made appear to be much more common than it really was.
I happily wear my hair like this. And wear circle skirts. I get ridiculed for it, sure, but its not 'old', 'outdated' or 'granny - like'. Its real beauty.
I am eighty years old. So the fifties is my era. I wore high heals every day to work in an office and nobody wore kitten heels We wore very short hair. Because that was considered classy. If you had long hair. Then you wore it in a french twist .crinoline underslips(fluffy slip, you called them) were worn by young women for going out to church. Etc. Never if you worked in an office. As they were informal a d worn with flats. Straight skirts for work always were worn with high heels. Sometimes young women wore flats and wide poodle skirts ( a wide skirt made from felt with a picture of a poodle on it) hats and gloves were worn for church. Going downtown, job interviews
Carmen Peters thank you for answering! Do you remember when were they the most popular, like early fifties, middle of the decade, late fifties? Do you know where it was in style? Some people say they never saw poodle skirts in real life, but others say it was in fashion in their region! It's like a little forgotten piece of fashion history, I think that's really interesting.
@@JasminMiettunenIt was a dad revisited, there were poodle lunch boxes and so on. The skirt was worn with a plain shirt and sweater over it. Poodle skirts were worn by girls not women. Women wore circular skirts of better fabrics. thepoodleanddogblog.typepad.com/the_poodle_and_dog_blog/2010/04/poodle-skirtsthe-origin-and-influence.html
I went to a 50's party once wearing legit period clothing from a thrift store. Looked totally out of place because everyone else was wearing poodle skirts.
Grown women didn't wear poodle skirts in the 50s. One politically incorrect fashion trend I just remember from the late 50s and I haven't seen or heard of them since. It was a skirt of a solid bright color, tightly gathered and very full skirts with waistband button and side zippers, knee length over crinoline petticoats. Lots of rickrack on the skirts and short sleeves v neck blouse worn tucked in. They were called Squaw Dresses and my older sisters and I each had one, made by our mom. She taught us how to sew and she was born Aug 8th 1921, 99 yrs ago this week. I was born in 1955 and my dress was a girls size 4. Turquoise!
I hate how that’s the only significant skirt that tends to get repeated over and over again. I’ve refused to even own one because of this, and decided to explore the era outside of the costume
i feel that! i’ve had this problem with 80s parties, because I do my research and show up looking only slightly different from my everyday (slightly 80s) style, and everyone else is in neon pink exercise clothes with ziggy stardust makeup
The vintage car restoration clubs promote the 1950s "look." The men generally get it right, and a lot of the women go for a rockabilly style. In the 90s the women who got it right were the ones who shopped vintage at Aardvark's (Los Angeles area vintage shop).
paige mallory yes lmao, she needs to do 80s bc not everyone dressed like fluro, bubblegum eating, roller skaters. My parents wore extremely simple clothing
I don't think people really think of Twiggy when they think of 60s fashion anymore. They think more of hippies (on the most extreme end; Austin Powers, on the more subtle end; Hair), beatniks, and if you're really going for obscure, The Mod Squad.
I was eighteen when I graduated from high school in 1953, In high school we wore both wide skirts with blouses, sweaters and a combination of those. We also wore pencil skirts and a-line skirts. Dresses were worn mostly to church or parties. However, by the time I married and had a baby, my waistline was no longer 22 inches. But I no longer wore the same type of clothes. I wore a girdle, and a waist length bra, when I wasn’t at home. I remember my friends and I would look at fashion magazines and say, “in 50 or 60 years people would look at those old photos and actually thought we dressed this way”. The magazines only showed what women with money, and lots of it, dressed. We would wear fitted dresses and suits to special events and to church, but lived mostly in Capri pans and blouses and usually very short har. Things changed a lot in the late 50’s and early 60’s when you could wear most anything, log, short, or anything in between. Sorry, I didn’t intend writing an essay, but still thought of more that I remembered, but I’ll stop wasting your time now. I enjoy your TH-cam blogs and learned a lot from them.
No need to apologize, this is the type of primary information that we fashion history enthusiasts dream of finding! I was definitely left with the impression of "fancy dress with crinoline and heels and pearls always", so to hear that capri pants were common every day wear is really interesting. It makes a lot of sense, people always wore comfortable and sensible clothes, go figure haha
"Curvy" hasn't always been a euphemism for overweight. Curvy referred to the fact that the differences in your "ins" and "outs" on your figure where greater than average. A woman could be tiny and still be curvy
Michele Givens THANK YOU! Curvy nowadays seems to mean BIG bust and BIG hips and thick legs. When in reality, for me, curvy can be any girl of any size whose waist line is smaller than the bust and hip size, giving the hourglass or pear shape.
I have an autoimmune disease that, among other things, effects the ability of my GI system to absorb nutrients. Though I have good doctors, medications and therapies, sometimes the disease gets out of our control and neither eating nor exercise nor physical therapy can keep my body from consuming all the nutrients on/in it - all my muscle, tissue, good and bad fat!, and eventually the calcium in my bones basically melts off since my body can’t access the nutrients from food. (We can assist my body by running nutrients, sugars, and lipids directly into my blood stream - it’s not fun or easy, and it can be dangerous for infection- like, I don’t recommend it if you could do a feeding tube instead- but it keeps me alive until we get the disease back under control) Anyway, the point is, the point is I was once too curvy to be a model because my chest and thighs were too big, and I never would have fit model sizes. Now, I often wear a size 0, and usually don’t climb out of a 2 - so closer to modeling, BUT I’m still too “curvy” because my chest and hips are wider than my waist. Curvy doesn’t even have to mean “full figured” - women are proportionally built with a rib cage that is bigger at the top where the lungs are set wider apart, and the bones of our pelvis should sit wider than a man’s do because many of us have the ability, and some of us will choose to birth a child - something male hips pretty much universally (at least still with today’s tech) aren’t doing. We aren’t supposed to look like a flat rectangle! We’re supposed to have “in’s” and “outs” and the “average” is supposed to be “curvy”
i feel like another thing people don’t really realize about fashion history is that there can be multiple trends happening & that fashion changes a lot even in just one decade. the start of the decade can be a lot different than the end of it, especially in huge transition periods. people have different senses of style, & there can be different trends depending on your overall aesthetic. imagine someone trying to sum up the decade 2000 but only describing scene kids & what they wear.
So true! the beginning of the 1950's was much like the end of the '40's and slowly started to change, Jackie Kennedy did so much to "update" the early 60's look also. As has been noted, even in the mid-60's the hemline was right at the bottom of the knee. One thing several people have mentioned is the foundation garments, girdles were worn nearly every day, along with stockings. Using yesterday's patterns to make clothing today can be tricky, the sizing is much smaller then and you absolutely had to wear foundation garments under them for a smooth line. Pants were worn, especially in winter, wool lined and worn with with the big cable sweaters and a turtle neck, just mostly at home and on week-ends. Something that was wonderful was the "but piece" on straight skirts, a piece of fabric sewing from the waist band to about half way dow3n the inside back of the skirt, kept the back of the skirt from "cupping", so you didn't have a "baggy bottom on your straight skirt. By 1966 the hemlines had started to creep up to just over the knee!
True. Both of my grandmas were young in the 50’s but wore two TOTALLY different styles. My grandma on my mom’s side dressed like an old Dior ad (she was a very glamorous woman with a rich husband!😂) and my grandma on my dad’s side dressed more like the summer outfits in this video.
And it depends on ones location at the time as well. I didn't find out that 'twin sets' had been a thing in the 60's until I was well into my 30's. No one in my town wore them, nor had they been available. It was well known that fashion from either coast didn't show up in the Midwest, if it showed up at all, for a healthy 6 months or more. Growing up in the 50's/ 60's most everyone's mom made at least some of their clothing teaching the skill to we girls as well. Store bought clothes were a luxury one got maybe before the start of the school year, birthday's and Christmas. We also didn't have many of them. For example the huge walk-in closets of today for the master bedroom would have been enough closet space for a family of 4/5+. I did have a pair of saddle shoes in elementary in the 50's. Only 1 girl had a poodle skirt that she would wear to a party sometimes. We did have very pretty party dresses. The same one until one out grew it. Daily dresses were simple, but pretty. Long pants, shorts only after school, in the summer or on weekends. Oh, and most housewives wore a house dress/simple skirt & blouse or a duster around the house. House dresses were a simple cotton dress, no pearls-lol, with pockets. It wasn't fancy, just comfortable. With a sweater and an apron as needed. They had maybe 4 of these. Slips, bras and underpants went under. Always slips! While I don't specifically remember, socks were likely worn with shoes for home wear. Girdles & stockings were worn when going out somewhere, shopping, church, etc. as they were a needed luxury for most working class families.
@@Me-mb1ex Both of your grandmas were very fashionable. I rlly used to LOVE 50s fashion but now im more into the clothing of the mid-late 60s and comparing clothing from the mid 70s to the early 2000s
The 80's is a perfect example. I dressed kind of preppy in 1981 and 1982, did the fun neon and Madonna thing (with lots of Rush T shirts) briefly in the mid 80's, and then became immersed in the traditional goth scene in Chicago in the late 80's. Karolina nailed that one.. (Medusa's) I LOVE 90's fashion. Just like everyone thinks 80's was all neon, they think that the 90's was all about flannel and grunge. The silhouette: Full miniskirt with chunky shoes and a good leather jacket. and the floaty maxi dresses. Think Singles, or Winona Ryder in "Reality Bites." It was a great look for those with a more athletic rather than skinny build. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a great example of how simple, flattering, practical, and elegant fashion could be in the late 90's. The perfect pair of black pants with a flat front and fabric you could move in.. or do stunts in.. the perfect tops, jackets, boots.. I miss the 90's. Everything started to look cheap and tacky around 2005. Fussy, cheap, unflattering, ugly. Marie Forleo recently has been sporting some of the ugliest clothes I've ever seen, that at never in any point in my life would I be caught dead in. Frills, messy shapes, dumpy silhouettes that only the skinny can look remotely fashionable in.. wtf happened? And now what's an aging GenXer supposed to freaking wear??
I hate how people think women wearing pants wasn’t a thing until the 70s And also weird thing to think about but those haircuts look like granny haircuts to us because that’s the style our grandmothers are emulating
I saw an Mexican novela based way back in the day. One female character had pants and all the other females were freaking out 😂 That's how I knew they started using pants way back.
Trivia time! James Herriot's vet series was set in the 30s or 40s (i forget) and the first time he met his wife to be she was wearing pants. His reaction "as i followed her over the farmland i thought there was a lot to be said for it." Translation: dat ass.
Women were wearing pants in the 1930's. I'm sure there were a lot of rules about when and where it was OK to wear them (they were still controversial in the 1960's!) but they were being worn, usually for sports/athletic activities. Here's Jean Harlow golfing: images.app.goo.gl/ioZninUwhfNfGuAZ6 It's not difficult to find photos like this.
Societies that were predominantly Catholic (including Mexicans, Italians, and Irish Americans) resisted the fashion for women wearing pants, and persisted in the tradition of ladies always wearing hats or scarves out of doors. That is why Sophia Loren always wore scarves and those signature sunglasses right up until her death.
@@StellaWaldvogel My grandma was born in 1953, so her teen years were in the late 1960s. She told me stories about her and her friends getting in trouble for wearing pants at school. She lived in Oklahoma, which was still pretty conservative with dress codes from what she remembers.
@@idk-oe7tk Just emotionally attached because it was the first ever anime I watched. Also, was hella long, so kinda got invested and developed a stupid crush on Kakashi. 👀
When I started looking into 50s more, I suddenly felt like it's the Dolores Umbridge era. Her hats and suits look very similar to what I found in catalogues I have.
Some of the more famous photos of Marilyn Monroe that are used to show her alleged thiccness were taken when she was pregnant! Poor darling never was able to carry to term though, so it was kept very quiet.
osita piscita Yep! Some of her famous dresses don’t even physically fit on mannequins they’re so small. She liked her dresses skin tight and even liked to be sewn into them occasionally.
This is such a sore point with me. We had a 50s costume contest at school (many years ago) I wore an outfit that my mother had SAVED from the 50 and didn't even get close. The girl who won wore a Tshirt and rolled up the bottom of her jeans. That was in middle school and I am now over 45 years old and still haven't gotten over it!!
So did my grandma who was in her 20's in the 50's, and then she kept my mother's hair the same way even tho she was born in the 60's, they both wear it like that to this day
I was reading an an article from an early 1960s magazine and it gave this models measurements (which would be todays size 2/4) and it said "and she is a perfect size 12". Marilyn Monroe was a size 12, hence about a size 4 today.
miss mrc thank you! I hate when people say they are Marilyn’s size today, “oh I’m a size 12 like Marilyn.” No, no you’re not the same size, the sizing was so much different back then. I’m a 4/6 in clothes, in those days I would probably be a 12/14.
right ahh today's clothes i wear a 0 or a 2 and in vintage jeans from the 80s im already a size 8 lmaooo except they're also usually too long on me bc im short hahahah
Exactly. According to her modelling card (from very early in her career), her measurements were: Bust 36 inches, Waist 24 inches, Hips 38 inches, and she was 5'9". I'm 5'5" and 38/30/38. There is NO WAY I'm a US size 12. (according to the size comparison charts I found, I'm a US 8)
My grandma told me she actually got made fun of when she was younger for having long hair, since all her friends and all the other girls had short hair. She told me she finally gave in and cut her hair before a dance, and when she and her friends went to the dance, my grandfather, who'd previously somewhat ignored her, went up to her and said she was the most beautiful girl there. I thought that was a bit cute :)
my mom grew up in the 60’s and she got made fun of because she had short hair. (her mom saw it in magazines from Paris) but they lived in a rural/countryside area where most people were farmers and girls had long hair.
A. Yes!! Location has so much to do with what was considered stylish. What worked in California wasn’t always happening in the Midwest. It’s still that way. In cities, styles are different.
My mom was born in 1951 so actually experienced the 60ies and 70ies but she lived in the GDR(she never moved but of course now it's just Germany) so she never wore the same stuff you see for those decades or even West German adverts. Every country does it a bit differently and then there are also systems who restricted the way people could dress either due to actually having laws against it or just not having the same things available. My mom just couldn't buy the same clothing and had to sew it herself with fabric which wasn't always ideal either.
@@michaelaluna7684 True, but in the context of Umbridge, her vintage, almost grandmotherly fashion makes her look less intimidating and more approachable, but obviously she's a horrible person. And her old fashioned ways of discipline are reflected in her style too.
My mother was a teen in the 50s and she said the same thing about the petticoats. She said, “I don’t know why everyone thinks we wore petticoats. We did want that full skirt look, but the way we did it was by having full circle skirts. We would lay them on the ground in their full circle and then starch the heck out of them so when they were worn, they stuck out like that.”
@@missmayflower omg Crinoline! I haven’t heard that word in forever! Yes, my mom still had her prom dress with its crinoline hoop and it was not soft at all 🤣🤣
My mom was in her 20s in the 1950s. She always says that it bothers her when TV or movies depicting that era don't reflect the women with "perfect" hair. She says that during that era, they all carried a comb, which they frequently used. They groomed their hair to keep it all in place...no flyaways allowed! Also, a copious amount of setting spray was used.
The ideal silhouette that I remember was slender hour glass shaped, feminine, conservative and modest. Blue jeans were vulgar and it was racy to tie your blouse at the waist instead of neatly tucking it in. I was born in ‘51 and wore my hair in braids, mother’s hair chin or short length, and her curls were neatly styled in a page boy most of the time. We wore white shoes only between Spring and Labor Day... we dressed in gloves and wore hats to shop down town or for worship. I also remember a lot of neatly pressed cotton shirt waist dresses for daily wear. There was a lot of ironing! Yes, fashion was very adult oriented, because frankly, there were fewer teenagers...the baby boom and youth spending power had not come of age and fewer children had been born during the war. Adults made the financial decisions...
Nowadays you wear a hat if it is very cold or very hot not for formal wear. And glasses if you need them for reading or distance and sunglasses only if it is very sunny.
Thank you so much for sharing! It's interesting to hear first hand accounts rather than just modern day opinions! Everything back then just looks so elegant and pretty, but I'm not going to lie I'd be mad if I couldn't wear jeans most days! Funny how things change!
Advertising specifically to children was also uncommon back then. It wasn’t until corporations bought off the gov in 1986 that advertising to kids went absolutely crazy. Reagan framed it as a vital element of “American freedom” to allow millionaires & billionaires to psychologically manipulate children. 🙄 There’s a good film on the topic called Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood available for free on TH-cam.
I know you touched on foundation garments, but something I really think people miss is how prevalent foundation garments were at that time. I've perused 1950s mail order catalogs FULL of shapewear. Standard girdles, longline girdles, boned girdles, belted girdles, corselettes, corsets, long line corsets, long-line bras, control panties, padded "butt lift" panties... These all existed and were employed to create the coveted "hourglass" shape! Another one for the road: BOAT NECKLINE WASN'T THE ONLY NECKLINE THAT EXISTED
shapeware exists today, we just have catalogues in that amount but just go to underwear shops: padded bras, wonderbras, push-up bras, control panties, control stockings aiming at various regions, soft corsets, hard corsets, you name it. and that's just underwear.
Yes, this! Foundation garments were pretty structured and often made use of not only boning, but industrial-strength elastic panels. There was even a garment called a "waist cincher" that was designed to do exactly that. Re; the hourglass figure, yes - that was definitely ideal. "Curvy" did not mean "plus size" as it does today. It mean a figure with fairly large breasts and rounded hips, with a waist much smaller. For younger women and teenagers, the ideal was a waist circumference of 20 to 23 inches. My teenage years occurred during the 60's, but I coveted my mother's and my big sister's outfits during the '50s.
@@barbarawest1205 I can't resist telling you I wore a "waist cincher" when I was in high school 1957-60. I wore it for two reasons. 1. I liked the smooth look it gave to my waistline. Without something like that even slim people had a little roll around the waist. 2. I needed something with garters to hold up my nylons. Pantyhose were still in the future and I found a garter belt unbelievably uncomfortable. I didn't find the waist cincher (bought at Sears) uncomfortable because I bought the right size -- to smooth, not to make smaller. Of course when it got really hot in Southern California all the shaping underwear was out except for a special occasion and I wore bra and panties and sandals on my feet!
@@dorothywillis1 Yup. No panty hose until, I think, 1966 or 1967. I know for a fact that I went off to college in 1965 with a garter belt in my underwear bag. It gave a very interesting effect from the rear if I was wearing a "straight skirt," now referred to as a pencil skirt!
I think another important thing to note is there were still probably a lot of women who sewed clothes for themselves and their family rather than buying from a store. I know my Nana made a lot of her clothes and clothes for her family until she got a bit older and mass produced clothes were more common. (I'm from Australia btw for context). So as such clothes for average everyday people therefore probably weren't as fancy as what is portrayed in the fashion magazines, and hence patterns from the era probably give a better idea of what the general population's fashion looked like. Also I believe it was common for women going into on an outing to somewhere like the city to wear gloves and a hat, along with maybe some light jewelry if they were older. It's really fascinating to look at the photos we have from the era and how different it is from what the media typically portrays (although some Aussie series do a pretty decent job actually, such a A Place To Call Home). Thank you Meme Mom for another fun and educational video!
True in France too. As a kid, I got my hands on a stack of old magazines in my aunt's attic. The magazine was meant for girls and there were sewing patterns in them. Looking at a cover now after having watched the video, it's interesting to note the flats and shorter skirts for the young women (and the short hair!). luciepp25.skyrock.com/3314582364-La-poupee-du-magazine-Mireille.html
True in Mexico too. My grandma made most of her dresses and also most of my mother and aunts' dresses during the 50's and 60's. We have a full box of patterns (I think the brand is McCain's or something???) And my mother (who was a child during the sixties, she is the youngest of three) told me they would do trips to the department store to choose their patterns, rather than choosing clothes. She also copied some of those patterns while older, so, she has some thick fabric a-skirts she made in the eighties. They're beautiful, but I can't wear them because my mother was way too skinny in her twenties and they don't fit my body.
Many women sewed. It was even taught in the 7th grade where I went to school. Everyone made an apron. My mother was an accomplished seamstress, and made all of my sister's and my clothes along with her own. As a result, we always had beautiful clothes. Fabric stores were very common.
It’s like the way people think mini skirts were worn throughout the sixties. I was 18 in 1967 and skirts were worn on the knee. It was only at the very end of the sixties that skirt hems started to rise.
It's interesting to think that that the higher skirts happened so late in the decade! I always thought that the sort of stereotypical mink skirt was common throughout the decade! What about the patterns on the dresses? Did the "mod" type of pattern emerge with the shorter skirts, or was that around before when the skirts were still around the knee?
Mary Quant's (credited) first miniskirt circa 1963 was barely above the knee and quite full and pleated. As the '60s progressed and the "swing" or trapeze line came into fashion, the dresses got shorter and Quant introduced patterned opaque tights to go with the climbing hemlines, and "op art" patterns came into play. Also, as the hems went up, so to did the necklines; the sweetheart neck and decolletage of the '50s and early '60s became passe - seems that the more leg showed, the less upper skin was acceptable - a balance of modesty, perhaps?
I often see that with people recreating Jackie Kennedy's pink Channel imitation suit. They always make the skirt above the knee, where if you look at pictures from that day (which there are many) you can see that it's right below the knees. Even Natalie Portman got it wrong (at least for the SNL sketch, I haven't watched the movie)
THANK YOU for talking about Marilyn and her being “plus sized”. That misconception drives me bananas! There are tons of genuinely plus sized women to admire for their body positivity! 🤦♀️
Lashawnda Thomas yep it was. That’s why people say she was plus sized: she was a vintage size 12, equivalent to a size 4/6 in nowadays. Marilyn was tiny.
If you mean body positive plus sized women from the past, I'm super interested to know about them, who do you mean? [I can't figure out how to make it really clear that I'm not being sarcastic, but I'm not at all.]
River Ó hÁillewill I mean body positive role models from this era. There were definitely women who were larger than others back then, but by and large, the population was smaller, and quite concerned with size and appearance. Healthier diets helped, but so did small portion sizing and stronger foundation garments that prevented overeating. It just kills me that people praise Marilyn for being plus sized when she was in fact, tiny by our standards. 😞
Make West seem what they called then, more voluptuous. Although she was not plus sized....I would like to know her real size. I was a teenager in the late 60s/ early 70s. I know I felt " fat" and was a size 9/10. I was also " bustier" which was not in fashion at the time. ( think shows like Threes Company and Charlie's Angels). Everyone was slender and built small.
I grew up in the 50's. The fashion was very distinctive. You always got dressed up when you want out. The casual clothes were matching tops and pedal pushers (capris). Women DID look glamorous. Also, there were very few plus size people. To this day, I carry much of the mindset of the fifties. It was imprinted in my mind to look feminine and glamorous.
I remember having stretch pants with stirrups when I was a child in the early 60s. I miss the classic styles. I was looking for a top/blouse pattern yesterday online. The fashions are just awful. Glad I have a lot of older sewing patterns yet. My favorite fashions are from the early 70s.
Omg my mum made me wear ‘knickerbockers’ with matching singlet/camis when I was quite young.. I remember there was a lemon and also a hot pink set. And I had loads of huge plastic jewellery to go with them.
"I Love Lucy" is a great show to watch for real 1950s everyday fashion. Season 5 episode 20 features Lucy in Paris lusting over expensive couture dresses as the main plot, and mocks avant-garde fashion! "Lucy Gets A Paris Gown."
YES I just saw that one a while ago and it was hilarious! Also, for those who apparently think '50s women never wore pants unless they were a Rebel Teenager...Lucy Ricardo, the famous sitcom _housewife_ , wears pants in MANY episodes. And it ain't no thing.
@@robinchesterfield42 Weren't women wearing pants in the 40s for work when all the men were off at WW2? A dress is a VERY BAD thing around a lot of heavy machinery. It'll yank you right in. I hate to think of how many got hurt or killed before they started using work jumpsuits
Most vintage fashion communities wind up through a filter, and the funny thing is. It's a good thing! It reflects the malleability of fashion, and sometimes changing tastes. It can even expose some of the history or bias. Rockabilly today is great vintage inspired wear, but not accurate. It's more about a feel than accuracy
It's often not meant to be particularly historically accurate. Chocolaticas are popular in that subculture, but I don't think anyone actually thinks people were frequently walking around in canvas shoes covered in glitter, fruit, horror, tartan, animal or cartoon prints or that men had hair as big as Brian Setzer did in the 80s.
I actually have my grandmother's "dress petticoat" I guess, for lack of better name. It was what she would wear to add a bit of umph to home made clothes for "going out" its basically like a modern slip with a TINY bit of tulle-like ruffling on the hem. Falls to about my mid calf.
noone: Incorrect. I was in grade school in the 50's and girls wore dresses with fluffy petticoats every day. And I did have a poodle skirt my grandmother made for me. The poodle was made of yarn that was sewn to the skirt.
I also thing it depends if you are thinking early 50s, which was very much more like the 40s or the late 50s that pushed into the early 60s. And the age. If you over 25... it was different. The Rockabilly movement made a big difference. Also I think region and Socio Economic Status played a part too. My moms family had more the puffy skirts and saddle shoes, longer hair (they didn't have the money for hair cuts often and wore the ponytail to keep looking neat)... and then another family I know had what was described here.
You have brightened my life, and my husband's. He is blind now but loves the sound of your voice and sense of humor. You, girl, are a peach!! Everybody gets the 50s wrong...it was not some paradise in the USA because there were stressed veterans (drinking) and lonely housewives and constant fear of "the bomb". I was born in 1947. My aunt was wealthy and took me shopping in Dallas. I got her daughter's hand me downs, which were beautiful...but she stopped growing and I shot up a foot taller!!! Mostly, women wore the simple clothes that got them through the war...white blouse with pretty buttons or lace....loose jeans or simple print skirt... flats or even rubber soled flats. Housedresses were still worn, and aprons. The fashions in Europe...Italy and France...just didn't interest people. They were having families and buying furniture.
very true! the historical revisionism is so so bad. It definitely doesn't seem like stores were even trying to imitate high fashion. I have an outfit of my grandmother's that is definitely from about 1952: but at first glance you would say that it was from 1945. The only thing that gives it away is that the fabric is synthetic. Polyester was not made during the war because of course petroleum was rationed. But in the 50s, it suddenly became cheap again, and thus a lot of garments were made almost exclusively out of the stuff. She was working for the Manhatten project, so she actually had a fairly decent income at the time: which definitely suggests that she really just didn't care about high fashion at all, since she probably had the means to buy it.
it's actually not a coincidence! Google tracks your activity on the internet so it suggests stuff you've been searching for in other sites on youtube. Hope this helps yall who are confused :)
The petticoats from the '50s were often made from scratchy, stiff netting, and they were MISERABLY uncomfortable!!! Needless to say, we wore them occasionally, but certainly not every day!!!
And those layers of net usually had to be ironed. Just washing them and hanging them to dry would leave weird creases and your skirt wouldn't fit right. As a child I was always getting in trouble for pulling my skirt and petticoat up. Little did they know that I never did that until the discomfort had me fighting tears.
I'm having a 50s dress made from heartmycloset and I hope they improved that a bit...lol. It'll need a lot of heavy duty shapewear (Merry widow, at least, Spanx ain't gonna be enough!) And a lil fluff. Not too much.
I'm surprised you didn't mention victory rolls. I never know whether to laugh or cry when I see obviously 40s hair with a 50s outfit. Please do a video on the 60s too!
LadyDragonbane that’s probably rockabilly. Rockabilly is a distinct subculture and while it takes inspiration from the 50s it isn’t actually vintage. It takes cues from a lot of things including the pin-up fashion of the time.
I would also say that modern rockabilly also blends elements from the early 80s rockabilly revival, custom car culture, and southern California Pachuca/Chicanx style. It's super regional too; modern rockabilly fashion out of Europe is very different than southern California/Southwestern U.S. or even from the Japanese rockabilly fashion, which is super cool in its own right :)
I can already tell you that it is rather accurate. They are taking a few creative licenses to make it all more aesthetically pleasing to the modern eye but there really aren't that many negative things to say. Sometimes the waists are a bit too high on the women, or too accentuated, and sometimes the dresses are slightly too revealing (evening wear especially) but other than that, it's a quite perfect show. In my humble opinion...
Oh gosh, I remember Ma in the '50s. Short curly blonde hair parted on the side. She had a favorite orange-red lipstick that could double as rouge if she was in a hurry. She and her friends wore pedal-pushers and blouses with peter pan collars with no accessories and flat strappy shoes around the house. Going to town was different. They HAD to wear a dress with a slip and stockings, a short driving coat and a hat. Going to church required all of the necessary undergarments, a smart suit, hat and gloves with modest low heels and pearls. Then there were the cocktail parties. All the ladies wore smooth satin collarless dresses with a wonderful sheen. The skirt dictated either a full petticoat or a close-fitting slip and the jewelry was sparkling. I thought they all looked very smart in their pointed high-heels.
It’s so funny to me that the 1950s has been reduced to poodle skirts, red lipstick, and pearls. Or crinolines, which my grandma says people only wore for special occasions, church, etc. I much prefer the “working girl” office type looks from the era. Anybody else love Della Street’s wardrobe from Perry Mason? She could DRESS!!!!
Nothing wrong with real pearls. My dad gave my mom and his sister a set each back in the day. Probably 1960s. I got them back when they each died. Still wear them. They need to be worn.
My mom grew up in the 50s and told me that only the rich popular girls wore the poodle skirts with the poofy crinolins and penny loafers. They were a huge status symbol in her school.
I'm a child of the 50's having been born in 1953. One of my earliest memories is of family members cutting out a crinkle style skirt and tulle petticoats, I was lucky all my clothing was hand made for me as my family had been tailors for generations both male and female, everything I wore was eagerly waited on by neighbors for my family passed them on. I danced in highland,tap and ballet to teaching level in two dropped ballet at 16 danced highland sword dance at international level in all those years I never ever purchased an outfit in fact my great niece is wearing and dancing in them todate.
I am short and most of the repro dresses I own are *still* way too short, usually around knee length. I've sewed from actual 1950s patterns, and if I follow the pattern exactly, most dresses fall to about my lower calf.
My grandmother (Born 1941 in London) Said that when she first arrived in the US she was surprised at how full the skirts were and how big their hair was. She also thought it was weird that people could afford ice cream and ate it A LOT. just reminds you how different fashion progressed throughout the world
See, this is why I always say I wear rockabilly AND vintage styles (repro, I can’t afford the real stuff because not much was made in my size, as you pointed out). I like rockabilly. But people do need to realise that rockabilly is inspired by a very singular 50s subculture- based on what the teens were wearing, and then punked up a bit for us modern gals. The cherry and polka dot stuff is popular in rockabilly now, but that’s more of a modern thing. Now I’m older I tend to lean more toward vintage type styles from both the 40s and the 50s. I have a few collectif dresses that work really well as 40s without a petticoat (I just wear a slip), or 50s with. I LOVE the New Look style, but it’s not easy to come by, and I only wear the more narrow dresses if I’m lighter in weight. Also, rockabilly hair is bigger than vintage hair. Also, the whole massive victory rolls (they weren’t that massive originally) did not go with the fifties style- they were a forties thing. Rockabilly has kind of smashed together 50s teen rock and roll style with 40s pin up style. They were two separate things, worn by very separate people!
What people call rockabilly is actually teddy boys at best but more often psychobilly filtered through vaporware esthetics (brands like Hell Bunny for instance and all their grotesque prints).
@@miafitzhugh756 Yes, but what I'm saying is the pastels look either very young or very old. And can age you or make you look not stylish, but kind of odd if you use pastels the wrong way. Like head to toe baby pink or blue can look odd...she's in her 90s, so what works for her isn't the sane as what would work for someone a lot younger (just the colors, but the style is for an older woman. Which works for her b/c that's what she is, lol).
For a long I really thought I had to be super classy to dress 1950's, until the brilliant Lucille Ball opened my eyes. She made me see that you can be classy, goofy and messy at the same time.
I always wondered whether "granny hair" came about because of it being the dominant style in the emerging adult years of the 1980-90s grannies. I mean, before grannies had long braids or old fashioned chignons.
They get shorter hair as they get older in general because as you get older (over 60) it's harder to brush long hair, to style it, you don't have as much dexterity, that kind of thing. Right now people in that age range still usually wear the shampoo set (the style of the 50s you see) because it's so easy to style for them.
@@6thgraderfriends I think it's also because hair texture changes a lot as people age. But absolutely I agree that historically people tend to continue wearing styles they wore in their early adulthood. How many 80s moms have you seen still going around with perms and puffy bangs? I think how ubiquitous social media is and how pervasive fashion trends are now has changed/will change that, but it was definitely a thing to hang onto the styles of your early adulthood in the past.
I remember that my grand grand mothers had all long and healthy hair. Of course it was grey but they wore it in buns and it looked really nice. My grandmother and most women in our village somehow seemed to loved the strange Granny style even when they were only 40 years old. 😂
when i was younger, i thought that once you got to a certain age your hair just stops growing because all the grannies i knew had the same short hair. it wasn't til i was like 13 and my granny said she was going to get a haircut the next day that i figured out that that just ain't it
@@6thgraderfriends Maybe, but at the same time all my youth I was surrounded by elderly ladies sporting beehive updo :P So I think it's more about what routine they learned rather than what's practical.
Since fashion gets "recycled" every 30 years, I feel like the 80's version of the 50's is what we identify with now as 50's fashion. Just like now, what people call "grunge" is really not... In the 90's we were really into the 60's (bell bottoms, floral print, polyester shirts, platforms). It'd be interesting to learn about how all that works.
i’d say it’s actually 20 years! i read an article somewhere about this online; the 70s were all about the 50s, the 90s were all about the 70s, and the 10s were all about the 90s. which i suppose is true. by the mid 70s the hippie movement had calmed down and by the early 80s it was gone completely. my mother, who grew up in the 70s, had told me a good few times that she had always wanted to be born 20 years earlier, because everything was about the 50s. same goes for the 90s, bell bottoms came back after 10 years of absolute hatred for them. very “feminine” dresses also came back, which was incorporated into the grunge movement and kinderwhore. the 10s were inspired by the grunge movement from the 90s. a lot of flannels, combat boots, second hand pieces, etc. came back. this was more of an underground thing though, more popular on tumblr and the internet. i actually see a lot of the 00s coming back recently, i see a lot of vintage pieces and low rise jeans, so i’d say the 00s are already here :-)
My grandmother, born in 1920, raised 5 kids and did her housework in a dress, girldle, full skirt and heels to keep house. (cooking, mopping, hanging out clothes)
You know what would be a super interesting video? The “30 year cycle” and its effects on fashion. The similarities between the 1950s and 1980s (more wealth post-war economic boom, more conservative yet bright and fun fashion, etc.) would make a super interesting topic and I would love to see your take on it!
@@rankaK Don't remind me. The 90s can stay dead. Unless you've got the twig body type those styles look good on, you shouldn't be wearing the 90s. (Nothing wrong with that body type btw, it just isn't a decade that works for most).
I was a child in the 90s and I totally wanna wear cute pajamas outside like I used to. And some other cute child clothes. I'm always envious. I just jumped from the awkward teen style (through brief periods of menswear only and skirts only) to a mom style - and I'm no mom. Guess I will come back to looking like a toddler once I'm past 30...
Shellina Musa First season is set in 1960, theres a calendar in the first episode I think when Peggy is at the doctors that shows the month and year :)
Yes!! I love polka dots because I love polka dots, not because they're vintage. Pin curls fascinate me. I have cobbled together my "style" with inspiration from the past. I doubt I will ever be truly vintage and I'm starting to make peace with that. Well, and one time I dressed with a heavy 1940's vibe and people asked if it was from the 60's. I was speechless.
Fido Downs that’s horrible! If your going for a specific era it should be recognised. And it’s really cool that you’re mixing your interests with historical information.
Karolina (who is immortal) 70 years from now: "The mistake people tend to make when dressing for a 2000's themed party is being too conservative with the accessories. A fashionable lady at the time could be seen wearing a bucket hat, oversized sunglasses, a thin scarf, 30 bangle bracelets, a tiny handbag covered in sequins, and a belt worn OVER the shirt. Body glitter would be added for a fun evening look. When recreating early 2000's fashion, there is no such thing as too much or too loud."
I'd love to see a video that explains the difference between 1940s and 1950s fashion, I get this question ALOT and I think it would help others understand the difference.
@@niamhohaileagain7748 oh, it's usually whenever I dress vintage and they ask what my favorite era is to dress and I tell them 1940s and they then ask the question because they assume that I like the 1950s because of my dressing style (if that makes sense). Or it is when I'm talking to someone about my favorite fashion era and I say 1940s and they ask the question I think because in the mainstream the 1940s and 50s seem to blend together clothing wise. Edit: if also like to note that I'm not a fashion expert by any means, I think people ask because I dress like the 1940s and they assume I'm a vintage fashion expert...
oHey, so netflix has a spanish producer that has released two series and theyre both set in the past Las Chicas del Cable (1920's) and Alta mar (1940's) and it would be awesome to see if theyre accurate, love you meme mom
@@kikibplays I haven't seen Cable Girls, but I skimmed over the first season of Alta Mar and it's not *too* bad. The only thing that irks me constantly is the girls' hairstyles.
I was a teenager in the late 50's, in south Texas. I remember well our mania for school clothes, that included poodle skirts, saddle shoes, penny loafers, pony tails tied with scarves, sweater sets (a pullover and a cardigan, closed with a pearl chain), full skirts over ruffled petticoats, and the controversy over the introduction of the sack dress, over which, we all went nuts! The dean of women in my school would measure our skirts. If she thought they were too short we had to kneel on the floor in her office and the skirt had to touch the floor.
40s was even more interesting because fashion was less globalized and worker fashion was still a thing since a huge part of the population were farmers, especially in europe... but you know what I truely miss, info on middle eastern fashion at the time, theirs was an intersting case because their fashion was the most westernized out of non-western regions but they also liked to combine them ottoman era fashion which was driven into extenction in turkey under ataturk
It would surely be interesting. But I don't really think there are as many misconceptions about 40s because it's just not as much a stereotyped decade as 50s and 20s are... You know what I mean? A few years ago when I was a total fashion history noob (not that I know very much now, but at least I know enough to know how much I don't know) I used to think 40s didn't even have its distinct style... I assumed they just wore 50s style clothing already. :D
My granny (born in 1927) had been holding a grudge against her mother (1900) her entire life for forbidding her to cut her hair short around 1950. Apparently all the cool girls in her village did it. Luckily when she left home and got married, she was able to finally do it.
I’m probably wrong but I think the cherry fabric comes from modern rockabilly and tattoos. Cherries are a popular tattoo motif, for tattoo collectors its considered kind of a must get. And since modern rockabilly and tattoos are tend to go hand in hand a lot of tattoo imagery started being printed on fabrics like cherries, anchors, skulls, roses, birds. So some dresses are made with that in mind but I think people that aren’t in that subculture and don’t know a lot about 50s fashion started to associate modern rockabilly and the cherry print as actual historically accurate 50s fashion
In the fifties only sailors or criminals had tattoos. They got them in jail and they certainly weren’t cherries. Having a tattoo was considered disgraceful. Also, everyone knew someone who had been a prisoner of war had had been forcibly tattooed for ID, so it was definitely not something considered “cool” or in any way fashionable.
A few months ago, I was helping my grandmother (who was born in 1944) cleaning her house. We got into her clothes, which she had 7 closets full of and she decided that she would give me some (a lot in fact). She had the habit of keeping lots of her old clothes hoping it would come back into fashion or she would be able to fir in it later. There were lots of clothes that I thought were from a certain era that were in fact from a later era. I am absolutely not claiming myself as someone who knows a lot about fashion history, by the way, I just enjoy it. With this experience, I'm thinking that maybe those misconceptions about fashion from a certain era that we often see in mainstream media are because they found pieces that were younger than what they thought they were, and didn't look further into it. I might be totally wrong though hahah
Oh, put all that stuff in the freezer. It sounds like a lot of it could be loaded with closet moths. If it hasn't been moved since who knows when? :) They're hard to get rid of. And they'll drive you insane.
It's interesting how you describe the haircuts as "granny haircuts," makes me think how in the future balayage or gray-colored hair or whatever's in fashion now (I'm not well versed :D ) will be considered granny style in the future 😂
I think it will be very very difficult to get a whole generation to grow old in a certain style because nowadays there's a different trend every other week...
@@xLiLlyx98 Makes sense. There are maybe some beauty ideals we don't notice because it's common knowlegde/ordinary to us but the future generations will see it as a quirk and be "oh that's so 2010s." We can already say that for the 2000s. Maybe it won't be hair related and it will be hard to call it "granny style" since like you say, things change quite quickly and grannies can span over a few decades but we can only wait and see :)
And fashion is directed to youth as opposing to adult women as Karolina points out... I am only speculating of course, I am most certanly not an expert :D
Recently we had a theme week. Everyday we had to go to school in a different outfit, based on the theme of the day. One of them was time travelling. Me and my bf took inspirations from the mid 60s. Most girls went as girls from the 50s, or at least they thought they were. It made me cringe as hell! I understand it isn't to be taken this seriously but wtf. A girl was coming in a blue costume dress and entered the room singing a song of the rolling stones because she thought it was from the 50s. Eh And someone told my damn bf he looks like a gay boyband singer from the 90s. Someone interrupted him and said he looks like a band member from 'the beachies'. Ehhhhh?! I know it shouldn't be taken that seriously. But the whole day I cringed so hard
Sizes have been recalibrated twice since then. Marilyns size 14 was an 8 today. Plus size was very rare. It was rare in the Eighties. Now so many of us have gotten so big, it’s very strange.
Since 1950 chemical companies have been adding preservatives to food to increase profits-our bodies have gotten bigger bc they don’t know how to process the chemicals. High fructose corn syrup is a cheap substitute for sugar and is like 20 times sweeter. Our food hasn’t gotten better, it’s been hijacked by chemical companies 😢
Not quite true, in America maybe. Italian women used to be aways curvy and now many of them try so hard to be skinny, starving themselves. And when I see old Russian or Swedish picture I see many healthy, curvy, even plumpy women, which ate only the necessary and it was all biological and stuff. Now the real problem are eating disorders and the push to be skinny even when not genetically natural.
I love that you touched on the hair styles. As a hairdresser, I have done a lot of research in to the styles of every decade and I find that most people, unless they lived it, don't understand how hairstyles evolved through each decade. Thank you for this delightful look at another decade that people sometimes don't get right.
Yes! As a fellow hairdresser I agree! People also seem to forget that they had different tools back then. For a long time women used animal fat to smooth down hair rather than the modern hairspray we have now. Sometimes they'd "sew" in a hairstyle with a literal needle and thread. They'd heat up cast iron and either straighten or curl their hair that way. For centuries across different cultures they used decorated combs to hold their hair in place. It all depends on the era.
@@6thgraderfriends Oh, pofessionals! Could you please explain me the point of "waves styled" updo? I've watched a video which made me enlightened about curling the locks by straightener and it supposed to be done each section vertically to the chin before combed, but all instructions about making it with rollers I founded said you should do horizontal sections. Where is the truth?? Sorry for my grammar)
@@anastasias.9666 So professionals and how I learned in school, when we use heat tools we do it vertically. As for rollers, it depends on the pattern you want. If you want the curl pattern away from your face, you do it vertically away from your face. If you want it horizonal toward the ground you do it in rows horizontally. If you don't want a specific pattern to be seen doing it diagonally can be better. It all depends.
I have a hairstyles question. My grandmother was born in the 19teens. Not exactly sure of the year, but 1914- 1916. She always wore her hair on a hair net. She would curl it, and then roll the length into the hair net to make it look shorter. I believe she did this because due to religious reason she felt she couldn't cut her hair. She would have been a Teenager/ young adult in the late 20s / early 30s. Was this also a fad at the time? It certain was for her and her sisters.
There weren't as many real fat people back then. I rather see a thin model than a fat one. The clothes look nicer and I would want to buy them shown on a thinner model. I see these fat models and that just turns me away.
It’s more like dressing emo, because the rockabilly ACTUAL style was a subculture, like she said in the beginning of the video. It really prevailed in Latino communities in the 60s too. But again, it was never the mainstream fashion.
Imagine someone like 50 years from now, seeing our vogue magazines and going « damn, people in 2019 dressed soo well , it looks so vintage and nice » HH It’s just as weird to think about as people 50 years from now thinking of 50s fashion the same way we think about, let’s say, 1880’s Victorian fashion
Can you review Agent Carter fashion (the principal characters) (about hair, outfits, shoes) ? I really would like to hear your opinion about it since it's 1950's time.
I'd add pin-up. I have a feeling that people often enough assume pin-up girl = 50's fashion. While it's very specfic, modificated style and half of the refernece is from 40's.
@@TheMaru666 Yeah, be careful typing stuff into the internet. Apparently there's a LOT of fetish underwear with pinups rockabillies!
4 ปีที่แล้ว +55
What a wonderful video!! Always so informative. I do have a small but different POV that might help. The Rockabilly look and style of dress was actually very prominent in the 50's, and to a certain degree, the 60's throughout the Latino/Hispanic communities through out the US. That's where the look came from actually. Not the gorgeous glamour dresses of high fashion. Nor the every day looks of the main stream. You are 100% correct about that. But, the patterns and colors and stripes were more common in these communities. And, I also agree with you about the skirt lengths. It frustrates me when the cross decades and call it 50's. I just want to take my seem ripper and make their skirts longer as I tell them, "below the knew!". That horrible of me to say. Oh no. 🤷♂️🤣😂🤣😂 Again, another wonderful video. And I apologize for this long message.
@@sophieisawesomeoh exactly! And few cars back then, plus few mod cons to make work easier, little stationary entertainment, lots and lots and lots of physical work basically, on top of the lack of nourishment!
Yeah, most people were super skinny up until the 80s I would say, women and men. Like if you see pictures of rockers from the 70s most of them were skinny AF and with little muscle.
My mother graduated high school in 1951 in NYC. I love looking at her yearbook. The girls wore mostly oxfords and pencil or A-line skirts. Most boys wore pompadours. Some were quite tall.
I remember my mom’s petticoats. She had a bunch. I played with them a lot. But, she was a working mom of five and she didn’t wear them very often. My favorite memory is when our babysitter played “strip” poker with my two oldest brothers. My brothers were dropping clothes left and right. But she never seemed to lose any clothing. Her shoes and socks came off, but that seems like that was it. Turns out she “out of modesty” would leave the room to remove an article of clothing. Yeah, right! She was actually just grabbing a petticoat out of my mom’s drawer and adding it to the game’s clothing pile. LOL LOL LOL So, there were my two pubescent, skinny brothers sitting in their underwear while my cool as a cucumber babysitter in all her clothing played poker with them. She and my mom had a good laugh about it.
a few years ago I went too a 70's party and....more than half of the people weared rockabilly style! Thats because they wanted rockabilly/50's party but they thought 70's looked like this! So they named it "70's party". They didnt know anything about fashion. Me and my boyfriend felt a little bit stupid in bootcut pants etc.... xD
sorry if the music is too loud, I didn't have the time to fix it, just imagine someone is playing it on the radio hehe
Karolina Żebrowska your everything is on point and I’m just over here like: 😭
Hi, I love your work ! What do you think people will tell about 2000s-2010s fashion in 70-80 years ?
ILLUSION 100
Marry me
yeah I was gonna say, love your channel, love your videos! But the music here was indeed too loud ^^"
I grew up in the 1950s, like others commenting here. Here's what I remember:
Average ladies wore deeper pink lipstick or softer shades of red, no foundation, a little swipe of powder to blot any shine on the face or nose. At most dark brown eyebrow pencil (black was considered too harsh) was applied to fill in sparse spots in the brows, no rouge or eye shadow was used. Only movie stars used eyeliner, we didn't know it existed. There was a product called "Dark Eyes" for women with pale lashes, that dyed them more or less permanently until they naturally fell out. Who knows what was in it.
Clear nail polish was worn on short nails. The really pretty teenagers, not us, experimented with colored nail polish on fingernails (and sometimes toes). They occasionally used eyelash curlers followed by a light swoop of vaseline. Mascara was considered quite glamorous and spent most of its time sitting unused in the top dresser drawer, to be saved for "someday".
Popular fragrances for teens were Jungle Gardenia, Tweed, Tabu, White Shoulders and Windsong. Moms wore Evening in Paris, Arpege, Chanel No.5 and My Sin. The original Evening in Paris was marvelous. We saved Mom's empty bottles to sniff for a mood lifter. Avon's Cotillion is an old-style fragrance that smells like the lighter summer colognes ladies wore back then. Little girls got tiny bottles of kiddie cologne from the dime store, which they dabbed on a couple times and forgot about. Cough.
Nylons with seams were always worn with skirts and dresses, even in high summer, and held up with garters attached to a longline or panty girdle. When you got home from church in August, you took off the nylons and girdle and padded around in old shoes with a cool drink until the roast chicken was ready. Waitresses and nurses wore special nylons that had a 4" extension of the darker, knitted heel going up the back where it showed. This made them more durable if you walked all day. They were ugly and worn by no-nonsense working women.
For a really small waist, you wore a waist cincher called a merry widow, named after the operetta. It closed with hooks and eyes. Full or half slips were always worn under dresses, and a lady didn't dare let a glimpse of that slip show below her hemline.
I'll assume that everyone here knows about bullet or torpedo bras, with the stitching that goes around and around and around... Flatter girls padded theirs with toilet tissue or cotton, or stitched a seam widthwise across the center to take the cups in. The stitching could be picked out later if there were further developments. Where we lived, all the girls filled out eventually.
For church, special occasions, or Saturday nights out, full skirts with nylon net can-can slips came out of the closet. My sister had a slip with 5 gathered layers, each one a different deep pastel. What fun I had with that! It took a good while to iron those full skirts, so you wouldn't wear them every day. They also took up more room when you sat or moved, so you wouldn't wear them to work, school or on the bus. Pleated skirts, moderately full, gathered skirts, a-lines or straight skirts with a kick pleat for walking ease were more common.
Circular poodle skirts had actual felt poodles appliqued on them. (We thought they looked dopey, but would try them on for a laugh.). I never saw anyone wear a poodle skirt outside of the movies. Felt was not considered sufficiently durable for clothing and difficult to spot clean.
Shorter slacks called pedal pushers or capris helped make steamy days bearable. Pedal pushers stopped about 1" below the knee, capris tapered and stopped about 7" to 9" above the ankle. Capris looked stylish, but they really pulled up on your calves when you sat down. Fabric was woven cotton, not knitted, so there wasn't any give. These were worn with flats. Heels were too racy, and only for movie stars.
Short fuzzy pants in Dr.Scholl's moleskin pink, called snuggies, were worn under skirts in the wintertime to keep your legs warm above the knees. Hideous things. If the wind flipped your skirt up, you were mortified. Thank goodness opaque tights came along later. Women wore black rubber overshoes in the winter called stadium boots. These zipped up over the ankles and had a cheesy little strip of fake fur around the top. Some were shaped to fit loosely around the high heels of dress shoes. Most were flat and were worn in the 40s as well.
Young ladies wore plain dress flats, penny loafers, sneakers, low dressy heels, or plain 3" heels when they reached their teens. Except for sneakers, soles were made from real leather and were repaired when they wore out. Little girls wore Mary Janes. Saddle shoes weren't really that popular, because they made your feet look big and clunky. Grandmas wore "nun shoes", black WWII lace-up oxfords with Cuban heels. Women wore lower 2" heels when doing housework and 3" heels in a plain style known as pumps when they left the house. They never stepped out of the front door without lipstick. An average day at home was spent indoors without any makeup whatsoever. In my very ordinary Chicago neighborhood at least.
There were some odd little fads every year, like plastic pop beads that snapped together to make any size necklace in cream or orange, large muffs in the winter, clear plastic peeptoe slingbacks and purses that folded two flaps into the top instead of snapping with a clasp. Check out the delightful movie musical, "Bells are Ringing", for the last one. The purse had a flat bottom so you could stand a cup of coffee and a danish in it. At one point, hoopskirts were all the rage for formal wear, ala "The King and I". With formal wear, women tended to keep their shoulders covered, if only with a cap sleeve or bertha. A neckline might be wider, but cleavage was covered as well.
Women and girls only went hatless in their own immediate neighborhoods. Shopping downtown, going to work, church or restaurants called for a hat and gloves (white cotton in summer). A good hat could be worn for years, even decades. My mother had a wide, flat picture hat in French blue pleated chiffon that she wore forever over her silver hair.
It seems strange now, but back then mature, older women were the trend setters. You weren't considered truly desirable and sophisticated until you were 30. Those women had a remote and experienced air that was tantalizing to boys and men. They could get any male to do anything without hesitation.
Fashion magazines were dream books and did not reflect real life. Women didn't worry about their weight until the 1960s, they simply bought a bigger size if they needed it. Most women weren't really obese, because housework and shopping without a second car kept them active.
On Monday you got up early to do laundry at the laundromat or in the basement. If you only had a clothesline for drying, the towels froze like boards in the winter and had to be ironed out.
On Tuesday everything was ironed: sheets, pillowcases, underwear (even bras and undershirts), hankies, etc. No disposable diapers, they were cloth, washed at home in Ivory Flakes and bleach. Men's collars and cuffs were stiffened with liquid starch cooked on the stove.
In the winter, woolens that needed cleaning were gathered up to go to the dry cleaner every Saturday. Coats, jackets and anything dark got a once over with the lint/clothes brush before you left the house. Shoes were polished at least once a week. White shoes were treated to liquid polish in a glass bottle, applied with a 3/4" fuzzy round dauber on the end of a twisted wire.
Ladies went to the local hair salon once a week for a shampoo and set, and carefully slept in a hairnet every night, no tossing and turning. To save money, you might wash your hair at home and put it up in pincurls, using two crisscrossed bobby pins to hold them until they dried. Permanent waves were very popular, in spite of being an ordeal. Most women wore their hair in a short style very similar to what Queen Elizabeth wore to her wedding. Longer hair was considered impractical for married ladies, and was usually reserved for teens and little girls, who endured rag curls. Curling irons were only about 1/2" thick and heated over a stove burner, no electric cords on them back then. My mother still wore finger waves into the 50s.
The old German spinsters next door dressed in circa-WWI styles with Mother Hubbard aprons. Their Sunday best French heels fastened at the side with a buttonhook and were to DIE for. Old fashions, like spit curls, rats, and bowl haircuts on kids tended to linger as long as the older generation was around. Just like today.
I was in grade school in the 1950s and couldn't wait to wear all those lovely, feminine, grown-up dresses once I reached high school. Imagine my disappointment when the 60s arrived with cheap-looking mini skirts that made us all look like dancing soup cans. Back then retro and vintage were not options for young people.
I never saw a Goodwill thrift shop until the 1960s. We wore out our clothes, removed the buttons to save in a jar and cut them into cleaning rags. (Good scraps from sewing were made into doll clothes and pincushions for everyday gifts.) When the rags were utterly used up, we traded a clean bag of cotton remnants to the old ragman for a bar of soap. He would drive his weary horse and cart home and sell his gleanings to a wholesaler, to be made into rag paper. Anything salvageable he put on his back. The ragman didn't just deal in rags, he wore them. Kids loved to pet his horse and would run outside whenever they heard the shout, "Rags 'n iron!"
Anyway, sorry for the ramble, just wanted to pass on a few details before they're lost forever. ( I did leave a few more comments later at the end of this section. The memories just keep flooding back once you start.)
No foundation? How did women cover pimples? Did they just let them show?
No need to apologise for "rambling." This was absolutely fascinating and I loved reading all your details. Thank you so much for sharing!
Thank you so much for giving us these intimate details. An incredible read ☺️✨
I read it all and absolutely loved it, thank you for sharing it 💕
Not rambling at all! Thank you so much for sharing, things are so different now and it's so interesting to hear a first hand account of what life and fashion was like back then! If you have any other stories from your childhood we'd all love to hear them!
Thank you for pointing out Marilyn's measurements! I can't stand when she is inaccurately used as a plus sized symbol. And I am plus sized myself.
Its actually quite sad, as in many pictures marilyn was pregnant or it was shortly after an unsuccsessfull pregnancy due to her suffering from endometriosis...
I think it’s also important that she pointed out a lot of women were also malnourished from WWII like Audrey Hepburn she wanted to gain weight but couldn’t due to her body changes while being malnourished and growing up in WWII and clearly Marilyn didn’t have this issue as she had a fuller figure when compared to these women.
@@eibhleannmoloney8977 Audrey mentioned once that she had an eating disorder, right? On a talk show I think.
@@5050TM Not to my knowledge from the interviews I’ve seen and from interviews from people who know her (I am a massive fan) she thought she was too slim and flat chested. Her son Sean said she used to eat lots of food and loved things like pasta and chocolate. I’ve tried her chocolate cake recipe it’s really good.
She did say she resented food because during the war what little food she did have tasted awful. Which makes sense when your eating things like thistles and other weeds to get by.
@@eibhleannmoloney8977 Ahhh ok. Thanks so much for taking the time to clear that rumor I heard about her saying that up for me!
My heartache when long full skirts were taken out of casual fashion.
Rin Wesley where them if u want to
They are here in Japan. I took full advantage when I moved here, and bought one right away.
YES. I love full skirts below the knee.
I'm wearing a below the knee dress right now! They're more in fashion than you'd think
Midi skirts are coming back strongly this year! Uniqlo has had some nice ones for the last couple of years too ^^
Capri pants!!
Extremely short bangs/fringe!!
Circle pins!!
Peter Pan collar blouses!!
Funny thing is how my Grandmother told me that she only wore a ponytail until she got married (at 16) then she put her hair up. My Grandfather was in the Navy so if he was off and not at home she would put it up ( in a ponytail) and if he was home at leave she would set her hair and pin it up. She explained that most of her friends did the same thing. If the husband wasn't home and you were chasing multiple children under the age of 5 you would not want your hair in your face. And if he had a regular 9 to 5 job then you would probably keep your curlers in until he was getting home from work. However there was more men that traveled for work and not home for days, weeks, months and it wasn't a big issue to look like a million bucks. My other Grandmother also got married at 17 and she kept her hair cut short soon after she was married and had her first child (my father) and your right most women had almost a boy cut because it was easier. Both said that they wore powder every day but not much else except chapstick or a little lipstick for fancy.
Ugh, I love that wallpaper!
Marilyn's claimed measurements of a 22 inch waist and 35 inch hips weren't her natural measurements. The 22 inch waist was likely achieved with shapewear and girdles. A modelling agency listed Marilyn's measurements as 36-24-34, which seems more realistic based on pictures I've seen of her natural waist. Also, those measurements were taken when she was younger and thinner. There's lots of photos of her looking a bit more "plump". She'd probably be a US size 4 or 2 these days. I think when people say "curvy" they often mean hourglass figure and not super skinny, which is what Marilyn was. Now of course she was never "plus size", but she was also never super skinny. I've looked at hundreds of photos of her and I haven't seen one where she looks painfully thin.
I'm guessing that people in 70 years will most likely look back at us now and think everyone dressed like the Kardashians or other celebs and did their makeup like Kim K and James Charles. I think all generations must get fashion sterotyped.
I remember in the late 90s when the 60s were back in a big way, and my mom asked me, "why is everyone dressed like a nerd?!" Apparently the particular 60s "look" designers chose to resuscitate was what only the dorks wore when my mom was young, lol. We also debated which 90's music would make it to the "oldies station" in 30 years. My bet was on Fiona Apple (wrong) and hers was "that 98 Degrees bubblegum crap" (ehh, kinda!) Turns out to be Nirvana, who knew.
I'm laughing just imagining people on Halloween in like 3023 barely even able to talk because they overdid it on the duck lips and wearing revealing clothing like "yeah, this is a TOTAL 21st century accurate outfit!"
@@cianap.281 I have no idea how those look like but now I'm going to search for it lol
@@7907-u8h Just imagining someone trying to recreate some of Gaga's outfits and beliving its normal everyday stuff makes me crack up!
@@cianap.281 "Can you belive people actually wore these things!? Those poor women must have been freezing in the winter!"
The 1950s rockabilly party seems like the equivalent of having an early 2000s party where everyone dresses emo/scene
sounds really funny to me though 😂
Neither is exactly an apt comparison. Emo hasn't really evolved (which is kind of the point of it) and scene was a natural outgrowth of 90s rave style (and has now evolved again into the e-girl). Hipster is probably the better comparison tbh: as it didn't really grow out of another style or evolve into anything either. Although a lot of people forget this, Hipster style was actually associated with a type of music: country rock. And, just like rockabilly, Hipster wasn't simply a style of dress but a complete lifestyle: and one which Hollywood made appear to be much more common than it really was.
😂
Or 2000s party everyone dresses like they're from Mean Girls 😂
I also think that might be where the cherries came from.
"[Short curly hair] does make you look like a granny" That's because our grannies were fashionable ladies in the 1950s.
I happily wear my hair like this. And wear circle skirts. I get ridiculed for it, sure, but its not 'old', 'outdated' or 'granny - like'. Its real beauty.
My mum doesn't like long hair and she grew up in the 50s. Makes sense now. ☺️
@@annoldham3018 long hair was for little girls in the fifties, and that was their pride and their parents pride.
Same with cardigans and khakis. It was worn by all the handsome men in those days.
This is so true!!! My grandma looked so good in the 1950s!!
I am eighty years old. So the fifties is my era. I wore high heals every day to work in an office and nobody wore kitten heels
We wore very short hair. Because that was considered classy. If you had long hair. Then you wore it in a french twist
.crinoline underslips(fluffy slip, you called them) were worn by young women for going out to church. Etc. Never if you worked in an office. As they were informal a d worn with flats. Straight skirts for work always were worn with high heels. Sometimes young women wore flats and wide poodle skirts
( a wide skirt made from felt with a picture of a poodle on it) hats and gloves were worn for church. Going downtown, job interviews
Very interesting, thank you!
Interesting! What time period did girls actually wear poodle skirts?
@@JasminMiettunen 1950's and it became fashionable in the sixties for little girls as we already wore boufant dresses.
Carmen Peters thank you for answering! Do you remember when were they the most popular, like early fifties, middle of the decade, late fifties? Do you know where it was in style? Some people say they never saw poodle skirts in real life, but others say it was in fashion in their region! It's like a little forgotten piece of fashion history, I think that's really interesting.
@@JasminMiettunenIt was a dad revisited, there were poodle lunch boxes and so on. The skirt was worn with a plain shirt and sweater over it. Poodle skirts were worn by girls not women. Women wore circular skirts of better fabrics. thepoodleanddogblog.typepad.com/the_poodle_and_dog_blog/2010/04/poodle-skirtsthe-origin-and-influence.html
I went to a 50's party once wearing legit period clothing from a thrift store. Looked totally out of place because everyone else was wearing poodle skirts.
I bet you looked the best: D
Grown women didn't wear poodle skirts in the 50s. One politically incorrect fashion trend I just remember from the late 50s and I haven't seen or heard of them since. It was a skirt of a solid bright color, tightly gathered and very full skirts with waistband button and side zippers, knee length over crinoline petticoats. Lots of rickrack on the skirts and short sleeves v neck blouse worn tucked in. They were called Squaw Dresses and my older sisters and I each had one, made by our mom. She taught us how to sew and she was born Aug 8th 1921, 99 yrs ago this week. I was born in 1955 and my dress was a girls size 4. Turquoise!
I hate how that’s the only significant skirt that tends to get repeated over and over again. I’ve refused to even own one because of this, and decided to explore the era outside of the costume
i feel that! i’ve had this problem with 80s parties, because I do my research and show up looking only slightly different from my everyday (slightly 80s) style, and everyone else is in neon pink exercise clothes with ziggy stardust makeup
I didn’t win a flapper contest wearing an actual Edwardian drop waist dress. A dress bought on amazon won.
I feel like Grease and Marilyn Monroe are most people's main reference points for the 50s and that's why they get it wrong.
And Elvis Presley
What about American Graffiti?
I know a lot of people that base their ideas of 1950s fashion on the Outsiders, which is set in the 60s.
The vintage car restoration clubs promote the 1950s "look." The men generally get it right, and a lot of the women go for a rockabilly style. In the 90s the women who got it right were the ones who shopped vintage at Aardvark's (Los Angeles area vintage shop).
I've also seen a lot of people who try to do 50s and end up using 40s hair as a reference and it just looks so wrong
please do a 60's video except it's 5 seconds long and all you say is "they didn't all dress like twiggy"
paige mallory yes lmao, she needs to do 80s bc not everyone dressed like fluro, bubblegum eating, roller skaters. My parents wore extremely simple clothing
@@Saddiesinclaire yeah. It wasn't all neon. There was quite a bit of browns too
HAHA
And they’re not all hippies either
I don't think people really think of Twiggy when they think of 60s fashion anymore. They think more of hippies (on the most extreme end; Austin Powers, on the more subtle end; Hair), beatniks, and if you're really going for obscure, The Mod Squad.
In the future everyone will think our fashion was just the e-girl and vsco girl fashion
Yep pretty much
The 2010's will be Kardashian and the turn of the decade Egirls, I bet.
cool actually hehe (include the rise of alt fashion)
Vsco is a fair generalization of teen girl fashion.
Nah, leggings dominated a good 10 years
The 80s are also misinterpreted a lot. I dont think everyone was running around in neon clothes and giant bright bows and stuff like that
Yes! From what I gathered, the general popular styles from the 80s were fluffy hair, loose tops or jackets, and bright colours, though not just neon
Were bell bottoms a common thing then?
@@AshHeaven Not at all.
@@PlaystationSimmer MALL BANGS.
@@AshHeaven Those were moreso a 70's trend, though I can't say how popular or common they were
I was eighteen when I graduated from high school in 1953, In high school we wore both wide skirts with blouses, sweaters and a combination of those. We also wore pencil skirts and a-line skirts. Dresses were worn mostly to church or parties. However, by the time I married and had a baby, my waistline was no longer 22 inches. But I no longer wore the same type of clothes. I wore a girdle, and a waist length bra, when I wasn’t at home. I remember my friends and I would look at fashion magazines and say, “in 50 or 60 years people would look at those old photos and actually thought we dressed this way”. The magazines only showed what women with money, and lots of it, dressed. We would wear fitted dresses and suits to special events and to church, but lived mostly in Capri pans and blouses and usually very short har. Things changed a lot in the late 50’s and early 60’s when you could wear most anything, log, short, or anything in between. Sorry, I didn’t intend writing an essay, but still thought of more that I remembered, but I’ll stop wasting your time now. I enjoy your TH-cam blogs and learned a lot from them.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
i love these comments with personal experiences from the era
wow. I genuinely couldn't believe your age. I'm sorry, but my father was born in '65 and he still doesn't know how to use facebook xd
No need to apologize, this is the type of primary information that we fashion history enthusiasts dream of finding! I was definitely left with the impression of "fancy dress with crinoline and heels and pearls always", so to hear that capri pants were common every day wear is really interesting. It makes a lot of sense, people always wore comfortable and sensible clothes, go figure haha
Thank you for sharing!
"Curvy" hasn't always been a euphemism for overweight. Curvy referred to the fact that the differences in your "ins" and "outs" on your figure where greater than average. A woman could be tiny and still be curvy
Michele Givens THANK YOU! Curvy nowadays seems to mean BIG bust and BIG hips and thick legs. When in reality, for me, curvy can be any girl of any size whose waist line is smaller than the bust and hip size, giving the hourglass or pear shape.
THIS. I hate how fashion retailers get it wrong all the time and call their new plus size lines "curvy." It's a SHAPE, not a SIZE FFS!
Curvy means you look like rectangular in anything without a waistline. I'm both curvy and big, not a great combination. Almost everything fits weird.
Still what It means where I'm from, here you'd describe them as "well insulated"
I have an autoimmune disease that, among other things, effects the ability of my GI system to absorb nutrients. Though I have good doctors, medications and therapies, sometimes the disease gets out of our control and neither eating nor exercise nor physical therapy can keep my body from consuming all the nutrients on/in it - all my muscle, tissue, good and bad fat!, and eventually the calcium in my bones basically melts off since my body can’t access the nutrients from food. (We can assist my body by running nutrients, sugars, and lipids directly into my blood stream - it’s not fun or easy, and it can be dangerous for infection- like, I don’t recommend it if you could do a feeding tube instead- but it keeps me alive until we get the disease back under control) Anyway, the point is, the point is I was once too curvy to be a model because my chest and thighs were too big, and I never would have fit model sizes. Now, I often wear a size 0, and usually don’t climb out of a 2 - so closer to modeling, BUT I’m still too “curvy” because my chest and hips are wider than my waist. Curvy doesn’t even have to mean “full figured” - women are proportionally built with a rib cage that is bigger at the top where the lungs are set wider apart, and the bones of our pelvis should sit wider than a man’s do because many of us have the ability, and some of us will choose to birth a child - something male hips pretty much universally (at least still with today’s tech) aren’t doing. We aren’t supposed to look like a flat rectangle! We’re supposed to have “in’s” and “outs” and the “average” is supposed to be “curvy”
i feel like another thing people don’t really realize about fashion history is that there can be multiple trends happening & that fashion changes a lot even in just one decade. the start of the decade can be a lot different than the end of it, especially in huge transition periods. people have different senses of style, & there can be different trends depending on your overall aesthetic. imagine someone trying to sum up the decade 2000 but only describing scene kids & what they wear.
So true! the beginning of the 1950's was much like the end of the '40's and slowly started to change, Jackie Kennedy did so much to "update" the early 60's look also. As has been noted, even in the mid-60's the hemline was right at the bottom of the knee. One thing several people have mentioned is the foundation garments, girdles were worn nearly every day, along with stockings. Using yesterday's patterns to make clothing today can be tricky, the sizing is much smaller then and you absolutely had to wear foundation garments under them for a smooth line. Pants were worn, especially in winter, wool lined and worn with with the big cable sweaters and a turtle neck, just mostly at home and on week-ends. Something that was wonderful was the "but piece" on straight skirts, a piece of fabric sewing from the waist band to about half way dow3n the inside back of the skirt, kept the back of the skirt from "cupping", so you didn't have a "baggy bottom on your straight skirt. By 1966 the hemlines had started to creep up to just over the knee!
True. Both of my grandmas were young in the 50’s but wore two TOTALLY different styles. My grandma on my mom’s side dressed like an old Dior ad (she was a very glamorous woman with a rich husband!😂) and my grandma on my dad’s side dressed more like the summer outfits in this video.
And it depends on ones location at the time as well. I didn't find out that 'twin sets' had been a thing in the 60's until I was well into my 30's. No one in my town wore them, nor had they been available. It was well known that fashion from either coast didn't show up in the Midwest, if it showed up at all, for a healthy 6 months or more.
Growing up in the 50's/ 60's most everyone's mom made at least some of their clothing teaching the skill to we girls as well. Store bought clothes were a luxury one got maybe before the start of the school year, birthday's and Christmas. We also didn't have many of them. For example the huge walk-in closets of today for the master bedroom would have been enough closet space for a family of 4/5+.
I did have a pair of saddle shoes in elementary in the 50's. Only 1 girl had a poodle skirt that she would wear to a party sometimes. We did have very pretty party dresses. The same one until one out grew it. Daily dresses were simple, but pretty. Long pants, shorts only after school, in the summer or on weekends.
Oh, and most housewives wore a house dress/simple skirt & blouse or a duster around the house. House dresses were a simple cotton dress, no pearls-lol, with pockets. It wasn't fancy, just comfortable. With a sweater and an apron as needed. They had maybe 4 of these. Slips, bras and underpants went under. Always slips! While I don't specifically remember, socks were likely worn with shoes for home wear. Girdles & stockings were worn when going out somewhere, shopping, church, etc. as they were a needed luxury for most working class families.
@@Me-mb1ex Both of your grandmas were very fashionable. I rlly used to LOVE 50s fashion but now im more into the clothing of the mid-late 60s and comparing clothing from the mid 70s to the early 2000s
The 80's is a perfect example. I dressed kind of preppy in 1981 and 1982, did the fun neon and Madonna thing (with lots of Rush T shirts) briefly in the mid 80's, and then became immersed in the traditional goth scene in Chicago in the late 80's. Karolina nailed that one.. (Medusa's)
I LOVE 90's fashion. Just like everyone thinks 80's was all neon, they think that the 90's was all about flannel and grunge. The silhouette: Full miniskirt with chunky shoes and a good leather jacket. and the floaty maxi dresses. Think Singles, or Winona Ryder in "Reality Bites." It was a great look for those with a more athletic rather than skinny build.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a great example of how simple, flattering, practical, and elegant fashion could be in the late 90's. The perfect pair of black pants with a flat front and fabric you could move in.. or do stunts in.. the perfect tops, jackets, boots.. I miss the 90's.
Everything started to look cheap and tacky around 2005. Fussy, cheap, unflattering, ugly. Marie Forleo recently has been sporting some of the ugliest clothes I've ever seen, that at never in any point in my life would I be caught dead in. Frills, messy shapes, dumpy silhouettes that only the skinny can look remotely fashionable in.. wtf happened?
And now what's an aging GenXer supposed to freaking wear??
I hate how people think women wearing pants wasn’t a thing until the 70s
And also weird thing to think about but those haircuts look like granny haircuts to us because that’s the style our grandmothers are emulating
I saw an Mexican novela based way back in the day. One female character had pants and all the other females were freaking out 😂 That's how I knew they started using pants way back.
Trivia time! James Herriot's vet series was set in the 30s or 40s (i forget) and the first time he met his wife to be she was wearing pants. His reaction "as i followed her over the farmland i thought there was a lot to be said for it." Translation: dat ass.
Women were wearing pants in the 1930's.
I'm sure there were a lot of rules about when and where it was OK to wear them (they were still controversial in the 1960's!) but they were being worn, usually for sports/athletic activities. Here's Jean Harlow golfing: images.app.goo.gl/ioZninUwhfNfGuAZ6
It's not difficult to find photos like this.
Societies that were predominantly Catholic (including Mexicans, Italians, and Irish Americans) resisted the fashion for women wearing pants, and persisted in the tradition of ladies always wearing hats or scarves out of doors. That is why Sophia Loren always wore scarves and those signature sunglasses right up until her death.
@@StellaWaldvogel My grandma was born in 1953, so her teen years were in the late 1960s. She told me stories about her and her friends getting in trouble for wearing pants at school. She lived in Oklahoma, which was still pretty conservative with dress codes from what she remembers.
I love it how you don't let the real history of fashion get lost in the misconceptions. ❤
Kakashi Hatake
Naruto Fan, aren't you
@@idk-oe7tk Just emotionally attached because it was the first ever anime I watched. Also, was hella long, so kinda got invested and developed a stupid crush on Kakashi. 👀
Kakashi Hatake
😂 same here! I just stopped watching it
Kakashi Hatake I was just about to say the same thing!
Yeah, and next you're going to tell me everything wasn't colored grey in 1950.
:)
Lol when I was a child, I thought the world was grey back then😂😂
The audacity 🙄
hold on THEY AINT?! 😩
Wait, WHAT!? You mean to say, they weren't like that!!??!?!
When I started looking into 50s more, I suddenly felt like it's the Dolores Umbridge era. Her hats and suits look very similar to what I found in catalogues I have.
Yep, I think late 50s/early 60s would be her jam!
@ I feel bad for saying this but for once I agree with Umbridge 😂👏
@ One wonders, was it accidentally or on purpose? 🤔
@@katerinacerna8555 It was absolutely on purpose. Lol
@@LadyJaggerX3 Yeah, sure! So underrated costuming. 😂
Some of the more famous photos of Marilyn Monroe that are used to show her alleged thiccness were taken when she was pregnant! Poor darling never was able to carry to term though, so it was kept very quiet.
Did she have the baby?
Ana Irene Nunes no, that’s what not being able to carry to term means
@@babychild4688 english is not my major language so there's certain terms that i don't understand. Thanks for the explanation tho
Ana Irene Nunes don’t worry about it! sorry if i sounded rude, but you’re welcome :)
osita piscita Yep! Some of her famous dresses don’t even physically fit on mannequins they’re so small. She liked her dresses skin tight and even liked to be sewn into them occasionally.
This is such a sore point with me. We had a 50s costume contest at school (many years ago) I wore an outfit that my mother had SAVED from the 50 and didn't even get close. The girl who won wore a Tshirt and rolled up the bottom of her jeans. That was in middle school and I am now over 45 years old and still haven't gotten over it!!
Don’t blame you
That's so sad! I wouldn't get over it after decades either.
THAT IS INSANELY FRUSTRATING I CAN’T PUT IT INTO WORDSSSSSSS
People are so dumb.
I'd be salty about that too.
My grandmother cut her hair in the 1950's and she just never changed it ever again. She wore her hair like that for six decades.
Same
Most of them did - which is why I kept my hair long.
So did my grandma who was in her 20's in the 50's, and then she kept my mother's hair the same way even tho she was born in the 60's, they both wear it like that to this day
@@netowner666 lol my mom and grandma too
I was reading an an article from an early 1960s magazine and it gave this models measurements (which would be todays size 2/4) and it said "and she is a perfect size 12". Marilyn Monroe was a size 12, hence about a size 4 today.
miss mrc thank you! I hate when people say they are Marilyn’s size today, “oh I’m a size 12 like Marilyn.” No, no you’re not the same size, the sizing was so much different back then. I’m a 4/6 in clothes, in those days I would probably be a 12/14.
right ahh today's clothes i wear a 0 or a 2 and in vintage jeans from the 80s im already a size 8 lmaooo except they're also usually too long on me bc im short hahahah
Vanity sizing totally messed up the way we see the past. M.M. was smaller than kim K who, in my opinion, undeservingly gets compared to
Exactly. According to her modelling card (from very early in her career), her measurements were: Bust 36 inches, Waist 24 inches, Hips 38 inches, and she was 5'9".
I'm 5'5" and 38/30/38. There is NO WAY I'm a US size 12. (according to the size comparison charts I found, I'm a US 8)
right? I’m a 16 in dresses in that time’s style, and a 4-6 in dresses today.... the biggest size I wear is 10 for pants
My grandma told me she actually got made fun of when she was younger for having long hair, since all her friends and all the other girls had short hair. She told me she finally gave in and cut her hair before a dance, and when she and her friends went to the dance, my grandfather, who'd previously somewhat ignored her, went up to her and said she was the most beautiful girl there. I thought that was a bit cute :)
That’s a really sweet story. Except for the teasing though, that didn’t sound fun
my mom grew up in the 60’s and she got made fun of because she had short hair. (her mom saw it in magazines from Paris) but they lived in a rural/countryside area where most people were farmers and girls had long hair.
A. Yes!! Location has so much to do with what was considered stylish. What worked in California wasn’t always happening in the Midwest. It’s still that way. In cities, styles are different.
@Willa Bukata EXACTLY what I was thinking 🤢
"Ah, a girl was pressured into societies expectations, how cute :)"
Some girl in my class: iVe SeEn HaIr SpRaY sO i KnOw A lOt AbOuT tHe SiXtIeS
Me: 0_0
Luella Anderson 😂😂 this girl when to school with the girl from "I watched Grease so I graduated from 50s fashion masterclass"
Ha ha! Pop culture derivatives do not an expert make.
@@user-mv9tt4st9k 😂😂 I'm obsessed with the way you worded that haha
My mom was born in 1951 so actually experienced the 60ies and 70ies but she lived in the GDR(she never moved but of course now it's just Germany) so she never wore the same stuff you see for those decades or even West German adverts. Every country does it a bit differently and then there are also systems who restricted the way people could dress either due to actually having laws against it or just not having the same things available. My mom just couldn't buy the same clothing and had to sew it herself with fabric which wasn't always ideal either.
@@DieAlteistwiederda weren't jeans forbidden in that time in the DDR?
Because they were american or something?
Plot twist: according to this video, Dolores Umbridge actually dressed vintage all this time.
She did! It was probably chosen to amplify how old-fashioned/horribly regressive she is.
@@antiquebeast being progressive presents its own problems as well
@@michaelaluna7684 True, but in the context of Umbridge, her vintage, almost grandmotherly fashion makes her look less intimidating and more approachable, but obviously she's a horrible person. And her old fashioned ways of discipline are reflected in her style too.
michaela luna she meant the costuming is to represent the politics of the decade. bc it was v republican/conservative, etc.
Literally what I thought!
My mother was a teen in the 50s and she said the same thing about the petticoats. She said, “I don’t know why everyone thinks we wore petticoats. We did want that full skirt look, but the way we did it was by having full circle skirts. We would lay them on the ground in their full circle and then starch the heck out of them so when they were worn, they stuck out like that.”
I had a petticoat/crinoline for wearing under a party dress. And it was not “fluffy”. It was painfully stiff and scratchy.
I remember making a skirt like that.
@@missmayflower omg Crinoline! I haven’t heard that word in forever! Yes, my mom still had her prom dress with its crinoline hoop and it was not soft at all 🤣🤣
My mom and aunt called them Crinolines too! They didn't wear them often, but they remembered this trend!
@@rotarydial000
My mom was in her 20s in the 1950s. She always says that it bothers her when TV or movies depicting that era don't reflect the women with "perfect" hair. She says that during that era, they all carried a comb, which they frequently used. They groomed their hair to keep it all in place...no flyaways allowed! Also, a copious amount of setting spray was used.
I literally have never seen 50s women depicted in movies with anything less than perfect hair
Freaking boomers, I hears that the hairspray released greenhouse gasses
@@ivonastrukar4715 Ok this Ok boomer meme being used under any comment that talks about an old person is becoming annoying.
And pins, every hair was pinned down.
@@ivonastrukar4715 r u proud of yourself?!!??
That hair & makeup looks AMAZING on you!
Cristal Palacios Yumar Has she done a Gibson girl hair style? I think so but can't find it. I'm thinking she would look great in that.
sebeckley th-cam.com/video/t__RhUyZMDM/w-d-xo.html In this video she does the Gibson girl look
The ideal silhouette that I remember was slender hour glass shaped, feminine, conservative and modest. Blue jeans were vulgar and it was racy to tie your blouse at the waist instead of neatly tucking it in. I was born in ‘51 and wore my hair in braids, mother’s hair chin or short length, and her curls were neatly styled in a page boy most of the time. We wore white shoes only between Spring and Labor Day... we dressed in gloves and wore hats to shop down town or for worship. I also remember a lot of neatly pressed cotton shirt waist dresses for daily wear. There was a lot of ironing!
Yes, fashion was very adult oriented, because frankly, there were fewer teenagers...the baby boom and youth spending power had not come of age and fewer children had been born during the war. Adults made the financial decisions...
Nowadays you wear a hat if it is very cold or very hot not for formal wear. And glasses if you need them for reading or distance and sunglasses only if it is very sunny.
Thank you so much for sharing! It's interesting to hear first hand accounts rather than just modern day opinions! Everything back then just looks so elegant and pretty, but I'm not going to lie I'd be mad if I couldn't wear jeans most days! Funny how things change!
Advertising specifically to children was also uncommon back then. It wasn’t until corporations bought off the gov in 1986 that advertising to kids went absolutely crazy. Reagan framed it as a vital element of “American freedom” to allow millionaires & billionaires to psychologically manipulate children. 🙄
There’s a good film on the topic called Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood available for free on TH-cam.
I know you touched on foundation garments, but something I really think people miss is how prevalent foundation garments were at that time. I've perused 1950s mail order catalogs FULL of shapewear. Standard girdles, longline girdles, boned girdles, belted girdles, corselettes, corsets, long line corsets, long-line bras, control panties, padded "butt lift" panties... These all existed and were employed to create the coveted "hourglass" shape!
Another one for the road: BOAT NECKLINE WASN'T THE ONLY NECKLINE THAT EXISTED
shapeware exists today, we just have catalogues in that amount but just go to underwear shops: padded bras, wonderbras, push-up bras, control panties, control stockings aiming at various regions, soft corsets, hard corsets, you name it. and that's just underwear.
Yes, this! Foundation garments were pretty structured and often made use of not only boning, but industrial-strength elastic panels. There was even a garment called a "waist cincher" that was designed to do exactly that.
Re; the hourglass figure, yes - that was definitely ideal. "Curvy" did not mean "plus size" as it does today. It mean a figure with fairly large breasts and rounded hips, with a waist much smaller. For younger women and teenagers, the ideal was a waist circumference of 20 to 23 inches.
My teenage years occurred during the 60's, but I coveted my mother's and my big sister's outfits during the '50s.
The waspie (short waist corset) is what was supposed to have given the New Look its shape.
@@barbarawest1205 I can't resist telling you I wore a "waist cincher" when I was in high school 1957-60. I wore it for two reasons. 1. I liked the smooth look it gave to my waistline. Without something like that even slim people had a little roll around the waist. 2. I needed something with garters to hold up my nylons. Pantyhose were still in the future and I found a garter belt unbelievably uncomfortable. I didn't find the waist cincher (bought at Sears) uncomfortable because I bought the right size -- to smooth, not to make smaller. Of course when it got really hot in Southern California all the shaping underwear was out except for a special occasion and I wore bra and panties and sandals on my feet!
@@dorothywillis1 Yup. No panty hose until, I think, 1966 or 1967. I know for a fact that I went off to college in 1965 with a garter belt in my underwear bag. It gave a very interesting effect from the rear if I was wearing a "straight skirt," now referred to as a pencil skirt!
I think another important thing to note is there were still probably a lot of women who sewed clothes for themselves and their family rather than buying from a store. I know my Nana made a lot of her clothes and clothes for her family until she got a bit older and mass produced clothes were more common. (I'm from Australia btw for context). So as such clothes for average everyday people therefore probably weren't as fancy as what is portrayed in the fashion magazines, and hence patterns from the era probably give a better idea of what the general population's fashion looked like. Also I believe it was common for women going into on an outing to somewhere like the city to wear gloves and a hat, along with maybe some light jewelry if they were older. It's really fascinating to look at the photos we have from the era and how different it is from what the media typically portrays (although some Aussie series do a pretty decent job actually, such a A Place To Call Home). Thank you Meme Mom for another fun and educational video!
True in France too. As a kid, I got my hands on a stack of old magazines in my aunt's attic. The magazine was meant for girls and there were sewing patterns in them. Looking at a cover now after having watched the video, it's interesting to note the flats and shorter skirts for the young women (and the short hair!). luciepp25.skyrock.com/3314582364-La-poupee-du-magazine-Mireille.html
True in Mexico too. My grandma made most of her dresses and also most of my mother and aunts' dresses during the 50's and 60's. We have a full box of patterns (I think the brand is McCain's or something???) And my mother (who was a child during the sixties, she is the youngest of three) told me they would do trips to the department store to choose their patterns, rather than choosing clothes. She also copied some of those patterns while older, so, she has some thick fabric a-skirts she made in the eighties. They're beautiful, but I can't wear them because my mother was way too skinny in her twenties and they don't fit my body.
@@missnoneofyourbusiness McCalls maybe?
Yes, my mom made a lot of clothes for me from patterns when I was growing up (kid and teens) and I was born in the 80's!
Many women sewed. It was even taught in the 7th grade where I went to school. Everyone made an apron. My mother was an accomplished seamstress, and made all of my sister's and my clothes along with her own. As a result, we always had beautiful clothes. Fabric stores were very common.
It’s like the way people think mini skirts were worn throughout the sixties. I was 18 in 1967 and skirts were worn on the knee. It was only at the very end of the sixties that skirt hems started to rise.
It's interesting to think that that the higher skirts happened so late in the decade! I always thought that the sort of stereotypical mink skirt was common throughout the decade! What about the patterns on the dresses? Did the "mod" type of pattern emerge with the shorter skirts, or was that around before when the skirts were still around the knee?
they were still considered miniskirts at the time though, right?
@@mils9495 anything above the knee I think is technically a miniskirt?
Mary Quant's (credited) first miniskirt circa 1963 was barely above the knee and quite full and pleated. As the '60s progressed and the "swing" or trapeze line came into fashion, the dresses got shorter and Quant introduced patterned opaque tights to go with the climbing hemlines, and "op art" patterns came into play. Also, as the hems went up, so to did the necklines; the sweetheart neck and decolletage of the '50s and early '60s became passe - seems that the more leg showed, the less upper skin was acceptable - a balance of modesty, perhaps?
I often see that with people recreating Jackie Kennedy's pink Channel imitation suit. They always make the skirt above the knee, where if you look at pictures from that day (which there are many) you can see that it's right below the knees. Even Natalie Portman got it wrong (at least for the SNL sketch, I haven't watched the movie)
THANK YOU for talking about Marilyn and her being “plus sized”. That misconception drives me bananas! There are tons of genuinely plus sized women to admire for their body positivity! 🤦♀️
Janaya McKeon the sizing was different back then
Lashawnda Thomas yep it was. That’s why people say she was plus sized: she was a vintage size 12, equivalent to a size 4/6 in nowadays. Marilyn was tiny.
If you mean body positive plus sized women from the past, I'm super interested to know about them, who do you mean? [I can't figure out how to make it really clear that I'm not being sarcastic, but I'm not at all.]
River Ó hÁillewill I mean body positive role models from this era. There were definitely women who were larger than others back then, but by and large, the population was smaller, and quite concerned with size and appearance. Healthier diets helped, but so did small portion sizing and stronger foundation garments that prevented overeating. It just kills me that people praise Marilyn for being plus sized when she was in fact, tiny by our standards. 😞
Make West seem what they called then, more voluptuous. Although she was not plus sized....I would like to know her real size. I was a teenager in the late 60s/ early 70s. I know I felt " fat" and was a size 9/10. I was also " bustier" which was not in fashion at the time. ( think shows like Threes Company and Charlie's Angels). Everyone was slender and built small.
Meme mom has saved me from my 4 am depression. 😭
Bubdolf it was like 10 am in Poland lol
666 likes, NOBODY RUIN THIS.
DROGON oh my god I didn’t even realize I got this many likes lmao
Lol xD
Literally me today
I grew up in the 50's. The fashion was very distinctive. You always got dressed up when you want out. The casual clothes were matching tops and pedal pushers (capris). Women DID look glamorous. Also, there were very few plus size people. To this day, I carry much of the mindset of the fifties. It was imprinted in my mind to look feminine and glamorous.
I remember having stretch pants with stirrups when I was a child in the early 60s.
I miss the classic styles. I was looking for a top/blouse pattern yesterday online. The fashions are just awful. Glad I have a lot of older sewing patterns yet.
My favorite fashions are from the early 70s.
Omg my mum made me wear ‘knickerbockers’ with matching singlet/camis when I was quite young.. I remember there was a lemon and also a hot pink set. And I had loads of huge plastic jewellery to go with them.
serendipidus1 that makes me disappointed in them
My Grandmother on my dad's side was like that. She had the fur and always wore gloves when she dressed up.
@serendipidus1 jeezus fucking Christ that's a 10page essay of a comment
"I Love Lucy" is a great show to watch for real 1950s everyday fashion. Season 5 episode 20 features Lucy in Paris lusting over expensive couture dresses as the main plot, and mocks avant-garde fashion! "Lucy Gets A Paris Gown."
YES I just saw that one a while ago and it was hilarious! Also, for those who apparently think '50s women never wore pants unless they were a Rebel Teenager...Lucy Ricardo, the famous sitcom _housewife_ , wears pants in MANY episodes. And it ain't no thing.
Lucy's friend Mary Jane always had gloves that exactly matched her outfit, my goodness I would love that!
There’s the episode about her wanting her hair cut into a French short style colored black. I Love Lucy is great for style examples.
@@robinchesterfield42 So did Mary Tyler Moore in Dick Van Dyke.
@@robinchesterfield42 Weren't women wearing pants in the 40s for work when all the men were off at WW2? A dress is a VERY BAD thing around a lot of heavy machinery. It'll yank you right in. I hate to think of how many got hurt or killed before they started using work jumpsuits
Imagine in the future people have 2010s partys and everyone goes dressed up as emos
🤣🤣
I can see that
Lmao
i was thinking more hypebeast
That’d be fucking lit actually
3:08 "Rockabilly was a thing, but modern rockabilly is..." *searches for term that won't send rockabilly fans into a frenzy* "...HUGELY INSPIRED." 😆👌
Most vintage fashion communities wind up through a filter, and the funny thing is. It's a good thing! It reflects the malleability of fashion, and sometimes changing tastes. It can even expose some of the history or bias. Rockabilly today is great vintage inspired wear, but not accurate. It's more about a feel than accuracy
It's often not meant to be particularly historically accurate. Chocolaticas are popular in that subculture, but I don't think anyone actually thinks people were frequently walking around in canvas shoes covered in glitter, fruit, horror, tartan, animal or cartoon prints or that men had hair as big as Brian Setzer did in the 80s.
Me: wears a fluffy petticoat because I'm trying.
Meme mom: we don't really do that here.
Lol
ME
noone Isn’t Lolita more Rococo and Victorian inspired?
I actually have my grandmother's "dress petticoat" I guess, for lack of better name. It was what she would wear to add a bit of umph to home made clothes for "going out" its basically like a modern slip with a TINY bit of tulle-like ruffling on the hem. Falls to about my mid calf.
noone: Incorrect. I was in grade school in the 50's and girls wore dresses with fluffy petticoats every day. And I did have a poodle skirt my grandmother made for me. The poodle was made of yarn that was sewn to the skirt.
I also thing it depends if you are thinking early 50s, which was very much more like the 40s or the late 50s that pushed into the early 60s. And the age. If you over 25... it was different. The Rockabilly movement made a big difference. Also I think region and Socio Economic Status played a part too. My moms family had more the puffy skirts and saddle shoes, longer hair (they didn't have the money for hair cuts often and wore the ponytail to keep looking neat)... and then another family I know had what was described here.
You have brightened my life, and my husband's. He is blind now but loves the sound of your voice and sense of humor. You, girl, are a peach!!
Everybody gets the 50s wrong...it was not some paradise in the USA because there were stressed veterans (drinking) and lonely housewives and constant fear of "the bomb". I was born in 1947. My aunt was wealthy and took me shopping in Dallas. I got her daughter's hand me downs, which were beautiful...but she stopped growing and I shot up a foot taller!!! Mostly, women wore the simple clothes that got them through the war...white blouse with pretty buttons or lace....loose jeans or simple print skirt... flats or even rubber soled flats. Housedresses were still worn, and aprons. The fashions in Europe...Italy and France...just didn't interest people. They were having families and buying furniture.
very true! the historical revisionism is so so bad.
It definitely doesn't seem like stores were even trying to imitate high fashion. I have an outfit of my grandmother's that is definitely from about 1952: but at first glance you would say that it was from 1945. The only thing that gives it away is that the fabric is synthetic. Polyester was not made during the war because of course petroleum was rationed. But in the 50s, it suddenly became cheap again, and thus a lot of garments were made almost exclusively out of the stuff. She was working for the Manhatten project, so she actually had a fairly decent income at the time: which definitely suggests that she really just didn't care about high fashion at all, since she probably had the means to buy it.
Could you react to the fashion accuracy in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? It takes place in the late 1950s!
Yesss that would be amazing
+
YESSS THIS!!!!!
Yesss! I personally think they did a great job.
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I was just researching 1950’s fashion???? And this came up? Coincidence? I think not!
it's actually not a coincidence! Google tracks your activity on the internet so it suggests stuff you've been searching for in other sites on youtube. Hope this helps yall who are confused :)
Meme mom knows what you need
Google sees all lol.
Meme Mom is onto you!
Google owns TH-cam so not that shocking :)
The petticoats from the '50s were often made from scratchy, stiff netting, and they were MISERABLY uncomfortable!!! Needless to say, we wore them occasionally, but certainly not every day!!!
Especially in warm weather,they would stick to the back of the legs and the netting would cut in, you would have to them off your skin!!!!!!!
And those layers of net usually had to be ironed. Just washing them and hanging them to dry would leave weird creases and your skirt wouldn't fit right. As a child I was always getting in trouble for pulling my skirt and petticoat up. Little did they know that I never did that until the discomfort had me fighting tears.
I'm having a 50s dress made from heartmycloset and I hope they improved that a bit...lol. It'll need a lot of heavy duty shapewear (Merry widow, at least, Spanx ain't gonna be enough!) And a lil fluff. Not too much.
I'm surprised you didn't mention victory rolls. I never know whether to laugh or cry when I see obviously 40s hair with a 50s outfit.
Please do a video on the 60s too!
LadyDragonbane that’s probably rockabilly. Rockabilly is a distinct subculture and while it takes inspiration from the 50s it isn’t actually vintage. It takes cues from a lot of things including the pin-up fashion of the time.
Omg, yess, I want her to do a 60's video too! :D
@@adorabell4253 Ah, I see. I thought rockabilly was supposed to be 50s.
@@adorabell4253 Rockabilly is actually a music style that was born in the early 50s so yes it's basically vintage...
I would also say that modern rockabilly also blends elements from the early 80s rockabilly revival, custom car culture, and southern California Pachuca/Chicanx style. It's super regional too; modern rockabilly fashion out of Europe is very different than southern California/Southwestern U.S. or even from the Japanese rockabilly fashion, which is super cool in its own right :)
Hey could you do a video on if the fashion in the tv show Peaky Blinders is accurate for 1920’s?
Yeeeeeeessssss
Pls
Pls do
I can already tell you that it is rather accurate. They are taking a few creative licenses to make it all more aesthetically pleasing to the modern eye but there really aren't that many negative things to say. Sometimes the waists are a bit too high on the women, or too accentuated, and sometimes the dresses are slightly too revealing (evening wear especially) but other than that, it's a quite perfect show. In my humble opinion...
Yes!
Oh gosh, I remember Ma in the '50s. Short curly blonde hair parted on the side. She had a favorite orange-red lipstick that could double as rouge if she was in a hurry. She and her friends wore pedal-pushers and blouses with peter pan collars with no accessories and flat strappy shoes around the house. Going to town was different. They HAD to wear a dress with a slip and stockings, a short driving coat and a hat. Going to church required all of the necessary undergarments, a smart suit, hat and gloves with modest low heels and pearls. Then there were the cocktail parties. All the ladies wore smooth satin collarless dresses with a wonderful sheen. The skirt dictated either a full petticoat or a close-fitting slip and the jewelry was sparkling. I thought they all looked very smart in their pointed high-heels.
You irish?
@@Yabadabadoo16 Ma was :)
@@floief ah
It’s so funny to me that the 1950s has been reduced to poodle skirts, red lipstick, and pearls. Or crinolines, which my grandma says people only wore for special occasions, church, etc. I much prefer the “working girl” office type looks from the era. Anybody else love Della Street’s wardrobe from Perry Mason? She could DRESS!!!!
Nothing wrong with real pearls. My dad gave my mom and his sister a set each back in the day. Probably 1960s. I got them back when they each died. Still wear them. They need to be worn.
The fricking poodle skirt cliché
I honestly cant ever recall seeing an authentic photo of a poodle skirt. Does anyone know where this even came from?
SandraS1397 they were there but they were extremely expensive so only very few people could buy them. Usually, the print weren’t even poodles either.
Cringe.
@@SandraS1397 th-cam.com/video/sZAx100ZNDc/w-d-xo.html
My mom grew up in the 50s and told me that only the rich popular girls wore the poodle skirts with the poofy crinolins and penny loafers. They were a huge status symbol in her school.
I'm a child of the 50's having been born in 1953. One of my earliest memories is of family members cutting out a crinkle style skirt and tulle petticoats, I was lucky all my clothing was hand made for me as my family had been tailors for generations both male and female, everything I wore was eagerly waited on by neighbors for my family passed them on. I danced in highland,tap and ballet to teaching level in two dropped ballet at 16 danced highland sword dance at international level in all those years I never ever purchased an outfit in fact my great niece is wearing and dancing in them todate.
Highland sword dance? Fire up the TH-cam machine! I can't do anything until I see one.
Imagine if in the future people think everyone would put makeup on with fidget spinners because of the stuff we’ve left behind. Good job humanity.
wait no i LOVE that. i want people a century from now to wonder how the hell we managed to put on foundation with a spinning fidget toy
They'll see everything in the landfills that doesn't dispose/break down easily. A lot of textiles and trash (lots of plastic, too)
I saw a tutorial of putting a foundation with a condom 😂👌
I hope that shot goes to the future and we will get embarrassed ahahah
@@hannahc3317 I'm okay with that
@Angry Hippo Stone isn't even indestructable. Erosion, landslides, etc. naturally destroys rock.
The skirt length on modern reproductions drives me mental.
I’m tall so if I get one of those I look like I’ve stolen a child’s dress.
I am short and most of the repro dresses I own are *still* way too short, usually around knee length. I've sewed from actual 1950s patterns, and if I follow the pattern exactly, most dresses fall to about my lower calf.
Yeah, 5’10” here. Few actual vintage clothing pieces make any sense on me. So scandalous. lol
Hannah Radenkova lol I'm 5ft tall and everything I wear looks vintage because the skirts always hit my knees or lower
On the other hand, I am so short that I look like a child that raided her grandma’s closet. XD
Same. I'm 5'6" and they all stop at my knees. ☹️
My grandmother (Born 1941 in London) Said that when she first arrived in the US she was surprised at how full the skirts were and how big their hair was. She also thought it was weird that people could afford ice cream and ate it A LOT. just reminds you how different fashion progressed throughout the world
See, this is why I always say I wear rockabilly AND vintage styles (repro, I can’t afford the real stuff because not much was made in my size, as you pointed out).
I like rockabilly. But people do need to realise that rockabilly is inspired by a very singular 50s subculture- based on what the teens were wearing, and then punked up a bit for us modern gals. The cherry and polka dot stuff is popular in rockabilly now, but that’s more of a modern thing.
Now I’m older I tend to lean more toward vintage type styles from both the 40s and the 50s. I have a few collectif dresses that work really well as 40s without a petticoat (I just wear a slip), or 50s with. I LOVE the New Look style, but it’s not easy to come by, and I only wear the more narrow dresses if I’m lighter in weight.
Also, rockabilly hair is bigger than vintage hair. Also, the whole massive victory rolls (they weren’t that massive originally) did not go with the fifties style- they were a forties thing. Rockabilly has kind of smashed together 50s teen rock and roll style with 40s pin up style. They were two separate things, worn by very separate people!
What people call rockabilly is actually teddy boys at best but more often psychobilly filtered through vaporware esthetics (brands like Hell Bunny for instance and all their grotesque prints).
@Cookie Crumble I'm exactly the same :)
Queen Elizabeth II is quintessential 50s, even today!
She is my fashion icon honestly 💗
@@morgan9637 isn't she a bit old for most reading this? The pastels are very elderly looking.
@@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823 elderly looking? you know we're on a video about vintage fashion... made by a channel about vintage fashion
@@miafitzhugh756 Yes, but what I'm saying is the pastels look either very young or very old. And can age you or make you look not stylish, but kind of odd if you use pastels the wrong way. Like head to toe baby pink or blue can look odd...she's in her 90s, so what works for her isn't the sane as what would work for someone a lot younger (just the colors, but the style is for an older woman. Which works for her b/c that's what she is, lol).
For a long I really thought I had to be super classy to dress 1950's, until the brilliant Lucille Ball opened my eyes. She made me see that you can be classy, goofy and messy at the same time.
I always wondered whether "granny hair" came about because of it being the dominant style in the emerging adult years of the 1980-90s grannies.
I mean, before grannies had long braids or old fashioned chignons.
They get shorter hair as they get older in general because as you get older (over 60) it's harder to brush long hair, to style it, you don't have as much dexterity, that kind of thing. Right now people in that age range still usually wear the shampoo set (the style of the 50s you see) because it's so easy to style for them.
@@6thgraderfriends I think it's also because hair texture changes a lot as people age. But absolutely I agree that historically people tend to continue wearing styles they wore in their early adulthood. How many 80s moms have you seen still going around with perms and puffy bangs? I think how ubiquitous social media is and how pervasive fashion trends are now has changed/will change that, but it was definitely a thing to hang onto the styles of your early adulthood in the past.
I remember that my grand grand mothers had all long and healthy hair. Of course it was grey but they wore it in buns and it looked really nice. My grandmother and most women in our village somehow seemed to loved the strange Granny style even when they were only 40 years old. 😂
when i was younger, i thought that once you got to a certain age your hair just stops growing because all the grannies i knew had the same short hair. it wasn't til i was like 13 and my granny said she was going to get a haircut the next day that i figured out that that just ain't it
@@6thgraderfriends Maybe, but at the same time all my youth I was surrounded by elderly ladies sporting beehive updo :P So I think it's more about what routine they learned rather than what's practical.
Since fashion gets "recycled" every 30 years, I feel like the 80's version of the 50's is what we identify with now as 50's fashion. Just like now, what people call "grunge" is really not... In the 90's we were really into the 60's (bell bottoms, floral print, polyester shirts, platforms). It'd be interesting to learn about how all that works.
It's so true! Today it's the 90s who get recycled. And in the 2030s, it'll be the 00s
@@luma2172 interesting, but wasn't "were the 90s kids" the thing from the 2010s? As in right now we might be more interested in the 2000s stuff
i’d say it’s actually 20 years! i read an article somewhere about this online; the 70s were all about the 50s, the 90s were all about the 70s, and the 10s were all about the 90s. which i suppose is true.
by the mid 70s the hippie movement had calmed down and by the early 80s it was gone completely. my mother, who grew up in the 70s, had told me a good few times that she had always wanted to be born 20 years earlier, because everything was about the 50s.
same goes for the 90s, bell bottoms came back after 10 years of absolute hatred for them. very “feminine” dresses also came back, which was incorporated into the grunge movement and kinderwhore.
the 10s were inspired by the grunge movement from the 90s. a lot of flannels, combat boots, second hand pieces, etc. came back. this was more of an underground thing though, more popular on tumblr and the internet.
i actually see a lot of the 00s coming back recently, i see a lot of vintage pieces and low rise jeans, so i’d say the 00s are already here :-)
@@luma2172 today it's mostly 90s and 2000s fashion getting "recycled"
My grandmother, born in 1920, raised 5 kids and did her housework in a dress, girldle, full skirt and heels to keep house. (cooking, mopping, hanging out clothes)
12:04
Karolina: "I would just feel uncomfortable in clothes like that. "
Also Karolina: wears edwardian dress
edit: Thanks for ♥ Karolina 😎😘
Karolina, I edited my comment and heart disappeared, could you fix my horrible mistake??? 😅
@@problemniezy9430 What? I didn't know the heart disappears when you edit your comment. Huh. That's new to me.
@@laobok It makes sense, otherwise you'd give easy options to make it seem as if the creator endorses some very weird views
劉木 Yes, it's weird. It normally doesn't dissapear.
@@Terrus_38 no it does. It always does. Maybe one day people will realize and not do those extra edits
You know what would be a super interesting video? The “30 year cycle” and its effects on fashion. The similarities between the 1950s and 1980s (more wealth post-war economic boom, more conservative yet bright and fun fashion, etc.) would make a super interesting topic and I would love to see your take on it!
That would explain why the 90s try to keep barging in...
@@rankaK Don't remind me. The 90s can stay dead. Unless you've got the twig body type those styles look good on, you shouldn't be wearing the 90s. (Nothing wrong with that body type btw, it just isn't a decade that works for most).
The 90s style looks good on various body types imo, not just skinny people
The 90s never died. Hehehehe
I was a child in the 90s and I totally wanna wear cute pajamas outside like I used to. And some other cute child clothes. I'm always envious.
I just jumped from the awkward teen style (through brief periods of menswear only and skirts only) to a mom style - and I'm no mom. Guess I will come back to looking like a toddler once I'm past 30...
Hi,
I remember "fluffy petticoats" as being strictly formal...Sunday School/Church, birthday parties, adults dinner-dances, prom. And they itched. : (
Mad men did a great job displaying the transition from the 50‘s to 60‘s. This show is like fashion-porn to me^^
The first season was set in 1962. I love the clothes in that show.
Shellina Musa First season is set in 1960, theres a calendar in the first episode I think when Peggy is at the doctors that shows the month and year :)
Yes! I love it for that reason. They did an excellent job on costumes and keeping it accurate.
My favourite is Call the Midwife. I also like that it’s British fashion rather than American which is quite different
This is why I don't say I dress vintage or 1950s. I like my recreation dresses and fluffy petticoats in patterns that aren't historically accurate
Yes!! I love polka dots because I love polka dots, not because they're vintage. Pin curls fascinate me. I have cobbled together my "style" with inspiration from the past. I doubt I will ever be truly vintage and I'm starting to make peace with that.
Well, and one time I dressed with a heavy 1940's vibe and people asked if it was from the 60's. I was speechless.
Fido Downs that’s horrible! If your going for a specific era it should be recognised. And it’s really cool that you’re mixing your interests with historical information.
Karolina (who is immortal) 70 years from now: "The mistake people tend to make when dressing for a 2000's themed party is being too conservative with the accessories. A fashionable lady at the time could be seen wearing a bucket hat, oversized sunglasses, a thin scarf, 30 bangle bracelets, a tiny handbag covered in sequins, and a belt worn OVER the shirt. Body glitter would be added for a fun evening look. When recreating early 2000's fashion, there is no such thing as too much or too loud."
I just watched the video, read the comments and got scared for a second because I didn’t looked at the channel name xD
I'd love to see a video that explains the difference between 1940s and 1950s fashion, I get this question ALOT and I think it would help others understand the difference.
Pumpkin Head +
Why do you get this question a lot?
@@niamhohaileagain7748 I don't know, people are just curious I guess
I meant why are they asking you specifically?
@@niamhohaileagain7748 oh, it's usually whenever I dress vintage and they ask what my favorite era is to dress and I tell them 1940s and they then ask the question because they assume that I like the 1950s because of my dressing style (if that makes sense). Or it is when I'm talking to someone about my favorite fashion era and I say 1940s and they ask the question I think because in the mainstream the 1940s and 50s seem to blend together clothing wise.
Edit: if also like to note that I'm not a fashion expert by any means, I think people ask because I dress like the 1940s and they assume I'm a vintage fashion expert...
oHey, so netflix has a spanish producer that has released two series and theyre both set in the past Las Chicas del Cable (1920's) and Alta mar (1940's) and it would be awesome to see if theyre accurate, love you meme mom
YEEESS!! And "Velvet" (1950's)
Oh god, the costumes in Cable Girls are kinda terrible and they drive me insane 🤣🤣🤣 Love the show tho!
@@kikibplays I haven't seen Cable Girls, but I skimmed over the first season of Alta Mar and it's not *too* bad. The only thing that irks me constantly is the girls' hairstyles.
I was a teenager in the late 50's, in south Texas. I remember well our mania for school clothes, that included poodle skirts, saddle shoes, penny loafers, pony tails tied with scarves, sweater sets (a pullover and a cardigan, closed with a pearl chain), full skirts over ruffled petticoats, and the controversy over the introduction of the sack dress, over which, we all went nuts! The dean of women in my school would measure our skirts. If she thought they were too short we had to kneel on the floor in her office and the skirt had to touch the floor.
Please can you do this for the 40s?!
Kirsten Clow YES PLEASE!
40s was even more interesting because fashion was less globalized and worker fashion was still a thing since a huge part of the population were farmers, especially in europe... but you know what I truely miss, info on middle eastern fashion at the time, theirs was an intersting case because their fashion was the most westernized out of non-western regions but they also liked to combine them ottoman era fashion which was driven into extenction in turkey under ataturk
It would surely be interesting. But I don't really think there are as many misconceptions about 40s because it's just not as much a stereotyped decade as 50s and 20s are... You know what I mean? A few years ago when I was a total fashion history noob (not that I know very much now, but at least I know enough to know how much I don't know) I used to think 40s didn't even have its distinct style... I assumed they just wore 50s style clothing already. :D
People didn’t run around in poodle skirts!? Grease lied to me!? 😱
poodle skirts were absolutely a thing, but definitely for teen girls, not adult women
Spencer Allegra not many grown women wore poodle skirts they were mainly received for younger girls
My mother graduated high school in 1958, and she said she never wore a poodle skirt.
My granny (born in 1927) had been holding a grudge against her mother (1900) her entire life for forbidding her to cut her hair short around 1950. Apparently all the cool girls in her village did it. Luckily when she left home and got married, she was able to finally do it.
Everyone is complaining because is 3 am where they are, while I’m currently having a brunch
I’m in Australia, and it’s just after dinner time here.
What did you have for brunch? :0
InSomniaArmyCheshire MooMooReveLuv scrambled eggs, toasties, avocado, yoghurt, muesli... it was nice
Thank you ! Like she's streaming from Poland, we're watching in Europe/Asia so it's noon for me hehe
@@eleanorrigby7914 Man, I'm hungry! That sounds good! :D
I’m probably wrong but I think the cherry fabric comes from modern rockabilly and tattoos. Cherries are a popular tattoo motif, for tattoo collectors its considered kind of a must get. And since modern rockabilly and tattoos are tend to go hand in hand a lot of tattoo imagery started being printed on fabrics like cherries, anchors, skulls, roses, birds. So some dresses are made with that in mind but I think people that aren’t in that subculture and don’t know a lot about 50s fashion started to associate modern rockabilly and the cherry print as actual historically accurate 50s fashion
Cherry print fabric was around then, I remember it being used for kitchen curtains!!!!!!
@@sueclark5763 exactly, not for clothes.
I have seen 1950 dolls with cherry fabric clothing.
My 95 pound doggie has a black collar with pink skulls. Does that count? Lol
In the fifties only sailors or criminals had tattoos. They got them in jail and they certainly weren’t cherries. Having a tattoo was considered disgraceful. Also, everyone knew someone who had been a prisoner of war had had been forcibly tattooed for ID, so it was definitely not something considered “cool” or in any way fashionable.
A few months ago, I was helping my grandmother (who was born in 1944) cleaning her house. We got into her clothes, which she had 7 closets full of and she decided that she would give me some (a lot in fact). She had the habit of keeping lots of her old clothes hoping it would come back into fashion or she would be able to fir in it later. There were lots of clothes that I thought were from a certain era that were in fact from a later era. I am absolutely not claiming myself as someone who knows a lot about fashion history, by the way, I just enjoy it. With this experience, I'm thinking that maybe those misconceptions about fashion from a certain era that we often see in mainstream media are because they found pieces that were younger than what they thought they were, and didn't look further into it. I might be totally wrong though hahah
Oh, put all that stuff in the freezer. It sounds like a lot of it could be loaded with closet moths. If it hasn't been moved since who knows when? :) They're hard to get rid of. And they'll drive you insane.
It's interesting how you describe the haircuts as "granny haircuts," makes me think how in the future balayage or gray-colored hair or whatever's in fashion now (I'm not well versed :D ) will be considered granny style in the future 😂
I think it will be very very difficult to get a whole generation to grow old in a certain style because nowadays there's a different trend every other week...
@@xLiLlyx98 Makes sense. There are maybe some beauty ideals we don't notice because it's common knowlegde/ordinary to us but the future generations will see it as a quirk and be "oh that's so 2010s." We can already say that for the 2000s. Maybe it won't be hair related and it will be hard to call it "granny style" since like you say, things change quite quickly and grannies can span over a few decades but we can only wait and see :)
And fashion is directed to youth as opposing to adult women as Karolina points out...
I am only speculating of course, I am most certanly not an expert :D
The next granny style is the Jennifer Aniston Friends haircut.
Recently we had a theme week. Everyday we had to go to school in a different outfit, based on the theme of the day. One of them was time travelling. Me and my bf took inspirations from the mid 60s. Most girls went as girls from the 50s, or at least they thought they were. It made me cringe as hell! I understand it isn't to be taken this seriously but wtf. A girl was coming in a blue costume dress and entered the room singing a song of the rolling stones because she thought it was from the 50s. Eh
And someone told my damn bf he looks like a gay boyband singer from the 90s. Someone interrupted him and said he looks like a band member from 'the beachies'. Ehhhhh?!
I know it shouldn't be taken that seriously. But the whole day I cringed so hard
Girl chill, it was a costume thing not a historical recreation
Those girls were just having fun, it’s not a big deal
Sizes have been recalibrated twice since then. Marilyns size 14 was an 8 today. Plus size was very rare. It was rare in the Eighties. Now so many of us have gotten so big, it’s very strange.
Since 1950 chemical companies have been adding preservatives to food to increase profits-our bodies have gotten bigger bc they don’t know how to process the chemicals. High fructose corn syrup is a cheap substitute for sugar and is like 20 times sweeter. Our food hasn’t gotten better, it’s been hijacked by chemical companies 😢
So true!
Not quite true, in America maybe. Italian women used to be aways curvy and now many of them try so hard to be skinny, starving themselves. And when I see old Russian or Swedish picture I see many healthy, curvy, even plumpy women, which ate only the necessary and it was all biological and stuff. Now the real problem are eating disorders and the push to be skinny even when not genetically natural.
I love that you touched on the hair styles. As a hairdresser, I have done a lot of research in to the styles of every decade and I find that most people, unless they lived it, don't understand how hairstyles evolved through each decade. Thank you for this delightful look at another decade that people sometimes don't get right.
Yes! As a fellow hairdresser I agree! People also seem to forget that they had different tools back then. For a long time women used animal fat to smooth down hair rather than the modern hairspray we have now. Sometimes they'd "sew" in a hairstyle with a literal needle and thread. They'd heat up cast iron and either straighten or curl their hair that way. For centuries across different cultures they used decorated combs to hold their hair in place. It all depends on the era.
@@6thgraderfriends Oh, pofessionals! Could you please explain me the point of "waves styled" updo? I've watched a video which made me enlightened about curling the locks by straightener and it supposed to be done each section vertically to the chin before combed, but all instructions about making it with rollers I founded said you should do horizontal sections. Where is the truth?? Sorry for my grammar)
@@anastasias.9666 So professionals and how I learned in school, when we use heat tools we do it vertically. As for rollers, it depends on the pattern you want. If you want the curl pattern away from your face, you do it vertically away from your face. If you want it horizonal toward the ground you do it in rows horizontally. If you don't want a specific pattern to be seen doing it diagonally can be better. It all depends.
Countries To Go thanks a lot for clarification!🙏🏻
I have a hairstyles question. My grandmother was born in the 19teens. Not exactly sure of the year, but 1914- 1916. She always wore her hair on a hair net. She would curl it, and then roll the length into the hair net to make it look shorter. I believe she did this because due to religious reason she felt she couldn't cut her hair. She would have been a Teenager/ young adult in the late 20s / early 30s. Was this also a fad at the time? It certain was for her and her sisters.
Ad: Don’t be fat.
Plus sized person: oh ok. Good talk.
There weren't as many real fat people back then. I rather see a thin model than a fat one. The clothes look nicer and I would want to buy them shown on a thinner model. I see these fat models and that just turns me away.
Julie Nielsen cool. You sound fun.
Julie Nielsen ok julie
Fat people definitely existed in the 50s, lol, where do people get these ideas??
@@theMoporter But not as much.
These videos bring me LIFE I work in a fashion museum and the misconceptions kill me
I'm so jealous! How did you get into that job?
@@taylor3734 I wanna know that too!
Where?!
YOU SHOULD REACT TO THE MAD MEN AND MARVELOUS MRS MAISEL COSTUMES
Wearing rockabilly when representing the 1950s is like wearing a fursuit when representing the 2010s
It's like dressing up like a Disco in the 1970's, no one dressed like that, and people will probably kick your ass for a list of reasons
If my grandchildren don’t wear fursuits when emulating the 2010s then they’re no longer my grandchildren
It’s more like dressing emo, because the rockabilly ACTUAL style was a subculture, like she said in the beginning of the video. It really prevailed in Latino communities in the 60s too. But again, it was never the mainstream fashion.
Those short hair cuts remind us of our grannies, because they were young when that look was in fashion!
EXACTLYYYY!! 👏👏👏👏👏😃❤️
Imagine someone like 50 years from now, seeing our vogue magazines and going « damn, people in 2019 dressed soo well , it looks so vintage and nice »
HH
It’s just as weird to think about as people 50 years from now thinking of 50s fashion the same way we think about, let’s say, 1880’s Victorian fashion
I don't think they'd say that about the crap they wear today. Hopefully they'll be wearing something much better.
I feel like polka dots and cherries are the “intro” prints you buy when you first start dressing vintage 😆
Only if you are making kitchen curtains!!!!
Can you review Agent Carter fashion (the principal characters) (about hair, outfits, shoes) ? I really would like to hear your opinion about it since it's 1950's time.
I'd add pin-up.
I have a feeling that people often enough assume pin-up girl = 50's fashion.
While it's very specfic, modificated style and half of the refernece is from 40's.
And a lot of those images were aimed to young men , like sexy pictures . Not many whomen dared to go out like that
@@TheMaru666 Yeah, be careful typing stuff into the internet. Apparently there's a LOT of fetish underwear with pinups rockabillies!
What a wonderful video!! Always so informative. I do have a small but different POV that might help. The Rockabilly look and style of dress was actually very prominent in the 50's, and to a certain degree, the 60's throughout the Latino/Hispanic communities through out the US. That's where the look came from actually. Not the gorgeous glamour dresses of high fashion. Nor the every day looks of the main stream. You are 100% correct about that. But, the patterns and colors and stripes were more common in these communities. And, I also agree with you about the skirt lengths. It frustrates me when the cross decades and call it 50's. I just want to take my seem ripper and make their skirts longer as I tell them, "below the knew!". That horrible of me to say. Oh no. 🤷♂️🤣😂🤣😂
Again, another wonderful video. And I apologize for this long message.
Oh gosh, the skinny women, yes! My grandmother's pregnancy waist was 24 inches (about 6 months pregnant) and she was around 5 foot 7 to 5 foot 8!!!
They were so skinny because of the nutrition they did/didn't get growing up.
@@sophieisawesomeoh exactly! And few cars back then, plus few mod cons to make work easier, little stationary entertainment, lots and lots and lots of physical work basically, on top of the lack of nourishment!
Don’t forget girdles.
@@adorabell4253 true that.
Yeah, most people were super skinny up until the 80s I would say, women and men. Like if you see pictures of rockers from the 70s most of them were skinny AF and with little muscle.
Notification squad! It's currently 3 in the morning and I should be asleep but meme mom has called.
Same here! (Well, now it's 330 am). Meme mom first, then bed.
It's 4 in the afternoon where I live
It's 11am on Wednesday and I'm watching this instead of work
@@vanitymarks8798 priorities lol
Oof, I relate to this on a strong level. I, too, have watched meme mum's videos at 3am, before. lol Night owl squad!!!
My mother graduated high school in 1951 in NYC. I love looking at her yearbook. The girls wore mostly oxfords and pencil or A-line skirts. Most boys wore pompadours. Some were quite tall.
I remember my mom’s petticoats. She had a bunch. I played with them a lot. But, she was a working mom of five and she didn’t wear them very often.
My favorite memory is when our babysitter played “strip” poker with my two oldest brothers. My brothers were dropping clothes left and right. But she never seemed to lose any clothing. Her shoes and socks came off, but that seems like that was it.
Turns out she “out of modesty” would leave the room to remove an article of clothing. Yeah, right! She was actually just grabbing a petticoat out of my mom’s drawer and adding it to the game’s clothing pile. LOL LOL LOL
So, there were my two pubescent, skinny brothers sitting in their underwear while my cool as a cucumber babysitter in all her clothing played poker with them.
She and my mom had a good laugh about it.
that's a really funny story
best. babysitter. ever.
WTF?? That's one weird babysitter
@@Lavenderforestfairy cant believe no one else is creeped out!! lolll
@@Lavenderforestfairy CHILDHOOD VICTIMIZATION!!!! So creepy!!!!!
The möther hath posted...siblings.....assemble.
Harry Goodman I cannot tell you how much I love your comment.
The Ö is not a substitute for O.
@@ingriddubbel8468 unless it's yö.
a few years ago I went too a 70's party and....more than half of the people weared rockabilly style! Thats because they wanted rockabilly/50's party but they thought 70's looked like this! So they named it "70's party". They didnt know anything about fashion. Me and my boyfriend felt a little bit stupid in bootcut pants etc.... xD
Clearly I was awake at 3am for a reason... THIS.
Love the makeup!
Right? She is beautiful!