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1950s Fashion Overview
1950s fashion varied greatly from beginning to end. Waistlines wandered, Chanel shimmered. Browse over 100 pictures and read about 1950s fashion history.
To think of 1950s fashion is akin to a bright summers day! Glamourous shapes, colourful prints and always exaggerated with voluminous skirts and tiny waists.
The 50s Silhouette
There are two main silhouettes in 50s fashion – the wasp waist with full skirt and the slim fitting pencil skirt. Both are iconic 50s looks that prevailed until 1956 and can be portrayed as super sexy or fun and flirty – depending on how you wear them.
The beauty of the 1950s era is that there is a ‘look’ that will suit any body shape – the more womanly the better. For those of us who lack curves, these can be created easily with a bit of help from belts, foundation garments and plenty of net and padding!
A bit of History
To understand the clothing of this era, one must understand what was really going on and how it influenced everyone’s way of life and subsequently how they expressed themselves through dress.
Let’s not forget that people did not see the back of rationing in one form or another until 1958. Even though we look back at the fifties as a colourful vibrant era – it was really a time of hard work for the country to get back to stability. Despite the hardship, people were happy and not surprisingly there was euphoria from winning the war. By the end of the 50s, the hard work of rebuilding the country had paid off and we were well on the way to prosperity. By the end of the decade, nearly every household had a television and people found they had disposable income again possibly influenced by the rise of women going to work.
All these economic and social changes had a significant impact on clothing and the pace of fashion in our country.
1950s Fashion
From a fashion point of view, this was the rise of the ‘ready to wear’ phenomenon. Clothing was now being manufactured ‘en mass’ and with greatly improved standards in construction and cloth quality. Variety was now available and imports started to return from, in particular….Paris.
Dior’s iconic ‘New Look’ arrived in Paris in 1947 and due to it’s vastly different shape to the war years – had an enormous impact on the fashion world. Style was now back on track, ironically picking up from where it left off before the pause created by the war. Dior created a succession of silhouettes he based on letter shapes – line A being an a-line silhouette derived from a widening towards the hem and was quickly followed by the Y-line, created by wide dolman sleeves tapering to a slim skirt. However, Dior’s initial look continued to dominate for many years with fashion looking nostalgically to the past with its boned bodices and full petticoats.
The Rise of the Adolescent
It wasn’t until this decade that the age between child and adult was acknowledged and a fashion more suited to this age developed. Full skirts, tight tops, capris and flat shoes – well suited to jive dancing become iconic for this age. This influenced casual fashions across the age range in both men and women.
As did the ‘sweater girl’ look – the feminine ideal of a large, pointed bust attained via the bullet bra, a conical pre-padded bra that pushed the bust upwards and outwards.
Some of the key Looks of the 1950s:-
Petticoats & Full skirts:-
Wide circular or pleated skirts were worn with layers of petticoats to give lift and were prominent in both day and eveningwear. Always to mid calf - never shorter but maybe longer for eveningwear. Petticoats were several layers of net and generally starched for extra stiffness or frothy chiffon in eveningwear in vibrant colours of green, pink and yellow!
Pencil Skirts:-
A narrow, close fitting straight skirt sometimes call a ‘hobble’ skirt restricted women’s walking creating the wiggle look. Fell from natural waist with little excess fabric with a small black split at the back. Pencil line dresses were also very popular for all ages, being a very sophisticated look for more mature women worn with heels and plenty of accessories. (The wiggle dress looks fabulous with a swing coat.) A pencil skirt with a shirt or sweater and worn with flats is a more fun way of wearing the look. Again the skirt length is important - it must be calf length to look really 50s.
The Sweater Girl Look:-
The tight sweater was born in the 40s and would remain popular throughout the 50s. Ironically, it's a little shocking to the modern eye as this look's aim was to emphasise a thrusting conical shaped bust and was invariably worn with a bullet bra. In actual fact, the modern rounded bust shape would have looked peculiar in the 50s - as everyone aimed for this shape bosom. Many vintage dresses accomodate for this shape in their makeup. The sweater evolved from turtleneck into the twin set - a 50s staple.
Get the 1950s Look – our top 3 tips to get you started
Tip 1 – the foundation
Foundation garments were deemed essential starting blocks. Nowadays, knickers are more hipster in style – but during the 50s, the waist was at the natural area just above the belly button. If you want to wear a pencil skirt and you were modern underwear you will get the unsightly bumps caused by these knickers. So our first tip is – get the right knickers.
Tip 2 - accessories
One cannot stress enough how important accessories were during this decade – a woman simply didn’t leave the house without gloves, hat and handbag. Hats were small lampshade style, wide brimmed or pill box shaped and were often accompanied by a veil. Gloves were long in the evening pushed down with bracelets and short in the day. Get yourself plenty of scarves, tie in the hair, around the neck or into a ponytail – dont be scared of using bold colours. Wide belts:- small waist was the must have accessory to create the desired look whether with a full skirt, a pencil or capri pants. Wearing a belt emphasised the slim waist that fashion demanded.
Tip 3.
Lippy Red lippy really made its mark during the 50s – but you need to find the right red for your skin tone. Blue reds for pinky skin tones and warm reds for yellow. True red for everyone else. Use a pencil first and colour in the full lip adding the lipstick after.
1950s Fashion Shopping List
Whether it’s a fun rock n roll image you’re after or Christian Dior’s sophisticated ‘new look’ of 1947, check out our shopping guide to get you started Capsule wardrobe for the 50s (enough to get you started):-
- Pencil skirt
- Crew neck cardigan
- Petticoat
- Circle skirt or dress preferably halter or boat neck.
- Bullet bra
- Waist knickers
Must have accessories:-
- Red lipstick
- Chiffon scarf
- Gloves
- Waist cinch belt
Click here to browse our 1950s fashion selection
Further Reading:-
- Horrockses Fashions - Off the Peg style in the '40s and '50s ISBN 9781851776016
- The Golden Age of Couture - Paris and London 1947 ISBN 9781851775217
- Blueprints of Fashion - Home Sewing Patterns of the 1950s
- Everyday Fashions of the 50s - Sears Catalogue
- Blog - Molly's Emporium: http://www.mollysemporium.com/1950s-fashion
Foxy Links:-
- Our Pinterest page on 1950s inspirational styles: http://pinterest.com/20thcenturyfoxy/1950s-inspiration/
- Our blog: http://thehouseoffoxy.blogspot.co.uk
IIlustration (detail) above: Coby Whitmore
In the early 1950s, the Korean War, coming so soon after the end of the Second World War, found the news media well prepared for foreign reporting, and for the first time television cameras were used to record events as they happened. The Soviet Union had gained strength and as it absorbed what were called the 'Eastern bloc' countries during and after World War II, the threat of the spread of Communism resulted in paranoia in the West. American senator Joseph McCarthy investigated those in the government who might ever have had a link to communist organizations or even had left-wing views. Homegrown anti-communist propaganda spread throughout American culture, with illustrated ads, posters, and feature articles warning of the 'Red' menace and what it would do to the American way of life. The 'Cold War' with the Soviet Union and Communist China began, and the arms race with its very real potential for atomic annihilation drove the country to fear for the future. In stressful times people seek diversions, and the entertainment industry provided movies produced in full-color and wide-screen formats, while the new medium of television was entering nearly every American home.
Cold War era corporate advertisement. Artist unknown.
In spite of the advent of television, the magazine publishing industry grew rapidly in the 1950s after a long lull through the Great Depression and war years. The Saturday Evening Post and Look had become the last remaining general interest family magazines and continued to publish articles of current events, short fiction, and features about family life and the arts. The largest consumer market in book and magazine publishing was women.
1950s Women Fashion
Coby Whitmore, Cosmopolitan magazine, 1952
Cultural pressure to create the idealized American family had changed the image of self-sufficient, war-time women back to an earlier generation’s model of wife/mother/housekeeper (or single girl searching for romance and a husband) and all media reinforced this: radio, television, movies, and the publishing world. Stay-at-home mothers and even working women were a big part of the reading audience and the publishing industry provided them with gender specific magazines which used illustration. The term ”Seven Sisters” was applied to the dominant women’s magazines: Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day, Women’s Home Companion, McCall’s, Redbook, and Cosmopolitan. These powerhouse publications were extensively illustrated and provided high-paying work to the top illustrators of the time, many of whom were working through agencies and professional sales representatives who brought in the work for a commission. Al Parker, Jon Whitcomb, Austin Briggs, Coby Whitmore, Joe De Mers, Bernard D’Andrea, and his wife Lorraine Fox were among the top-ranking illustrators of the day.
Bernard D'Andrea
Lorraine Fox
A range of publications for men were on the newsstands, too. There were special interest magazines for hunting, fishing, flying, mechanics, and science which all used illustration, as well as those which provided general interest men’s lifestyle content. Some featured photo layouts of beautiful women, like Hugh Hefner's Playboy magazine and Esquire magazine, both of which commissioned the best of illustration in each issue and strove to provide quality short fiction as well. Pulp short-story magazines and paperback pulp novels provided action, adventure, and science-fiction or fantasy stories and every issue had full-color cover illustrations. Two of the great pulp fiction artists of the 1940s and 1950s were Norman Saunders and Virgil Finlay.
Norman Saunders
Throughout the publishing world there were plenty of assignments, even for young, entry level artists, but the way that illustrators were given assignments was beginning to change. Competition in manufacturing in a strengthening post-war, 1950s economy caused a surge in advertising (which increased revenues for newspaper and magazine publishers), and “Madison Avenue,” where the big New York ad agencies were located, became the nexus of a profession second only to Hollywood in its glamour. Advertising concept artists and storyboard artists could be employed in full-time, well paying jobs visualizing print ad campaigns and laying out commercials for the new medium of television. Magazines were competing furiously, and to maintain their already successful formulas, art direction was getting more specific—more and more, artists were being told what to illustrate and even how to illustrate it. The 'boy/girl picture' and the 'clinch,' (Jon Whitcomb) were terms used to describe the formulaic embraces appearing in the women's magazines that most always showed a blonde female with dark-penciled brows, red lipstick, and a 'peaches and cream' complexion who was paired with a tanned male, whose face was often half-hidden. If an artist objected to the specifics of the assignment, there were many others waiting in the wings to do the work.
Jon Whitcomb, magazine illustration
Predictably, creative art directors began to tire of the formulaic and stylized realism which dominated magazine illustration. Some began to turn to more spontaneous approaches for inspiration—like fashion illustration, poster art, and even fine art and printmaking by artists like Leonard Baskin and Ben Shaun.
1950 Vintage Fashion
Just as families had gathered around their radios in the 1930s and 1940s, they now spent evenings at home, watching television together. People still kept their magazine subscriptions, but movies and television were now the dominant forms of entertainment. Animation was increasingly popular in movie theater shorts (UPA’s Gerald McBoing Boing) and on TV, and the playfulness of drawn characters in animation art influenced editorial and book illustrators. “Cartoony' drawing styles were beginning to be seen in many areas of illustration. U.S. ad agencies began using artists from Europe like André Francois whose simple, bold style for posters and advertising art was a refreshing change from American realism and inspired American ad agencies to consider looser approaches.
In the late 1950s, photography began to replace conventional, realistic illustration in advertising. More abstract approaches to illustration however, did not compete with what the camera could do and innovative art directors utilized illustrators with more playful styles as a way of attracting attention to ads or publications. It was clear that the second half of the 20th Century would bring a surge of creative stylizations.
1950 Fashion Era
Leonard Baskin, 1952
United Productions of America (UPA) animation art
1950s Fashion History
André François, 1956