1945 - 1960 The Suburban Dream Jump to:
1945 - 1960 The Suburban Dream Jump to:
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4 The Reappearance of Youth Fashions
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Fashion is a way of life; an attitude that transcends through your ensemble displaying your own originality. It allows people to express their feelings and make statements through their clothes and accessories. With the prosperity of the 1950s in full swing, American clothing manufacturers discovered — or perhaps created — new markets eager to buy their goods: children and teenagers. Television and printed advertisements instilled in 1950s kids at an early age a rampant consumerism that their parents had never had.
In the 1950s it took new forms - the chic of having a Burberry raincoat lined with mink, for example, or the throwaway gesture of wearing your mink with jeans. The appearance of jeans can be seen as the first intrusion of youth culture into the world of fashion.
By the mid-fifties there was a new generation in Britain, France and the United States who, still in their mid-teens, had more money to spend than their age group had ever had before. Full employment had created a mass of low-paid but regular work even for the unskiIIed young. Even if the individual wage-packet was not large, collectively their spending power was huge, as for many teenagers virtually the whole of their income was instantly disposable. Smart clothes, increasingly associated with music cults, were major items of expenditure, but they didn't want the aging, formal fashions that filtered down from Paris to the high-street chains.
The Groomed and tailored look were the hottest items around . Acting and looking “lady like” was taught virtually from birth. Heels and gloves were basically required to complete the "lady like' outfit. There were different kinds of dresses; one was a summery afternoon floral, it has a swing skirt attached to a top. Girdle was a necessary part of all ensembles even though you didn't see it. A girdle was almost necessity with the pencil style. They wore these kinds of dresses to show their curvy bodies. They called this the 'figure eight'. Young teens or girls did not wear these types of dresses, because it was too provocative. The dress also boasts bolero sleeves, which were very popular.
From the early fifties the department stores introduced "young idea" departments, where more youthful versions of couture-inspired styles could be purchased for middle-elass youngsters. But the working-class teenager - and, increasingly, the children of the middle classes as well - wanted something altogether less prim.
At first inspiration for youth styles came largely from the United States. The distinctive British Teddy Boy style began, in part, as a parody of upper-elass British Jermyn Street tailoring, but it was influenced by motifs from the American West. The youth cuIt in the United States had been under way between the wars, when an expanding student market and the casual and sports fashions particularly associated with the West Coast had given birth to the notion of youth fashions.
By the 1950s these had incorporated the nearest thing that America had to a foIk costume: blue jeans. Blue jeans were (and are) the prime example of workman's garb turned high fashion, and in the 1950s they symbolized a generation in revolt against the stuffiness of the times. Suburban domesticity and the nuclear family in the nuclear age generated the rebellion of teenagers trapped within its conformity, and blue jeans symbolized this rebellion.
When people think of youth fashion in the 1950’s, they often think of rogue teddy boys of England 1950’s fashion and the simple looks of a new breed of American teen idols like James Dean and Marlon Brando that set the standard for men’s 1950s fashions.
Worn with a black leather jacket they became the sign of instant untamed masculinity (Marlon Brando in The Wild One was the most threatening version of this rebel on a motorbike), but with their extraordinary versatility they also came to represent a simple youthfulness and a free and easy, casual lifestyle on the one hand, and female youthful sexiness on the other. No other garment has achieved the seemingIy impossible feat of representing at the same time both ultra-feminity and ultra-masculinity, the careless innocence of youth and the deviance of the outlaw, the traditional frontier values of the West and the jazz and music culture of the metropolis.
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