After the war and rationing of the 1940s, everyone was in the mood for opulance and luxury. It was also a return to propriety and the rules. Civil rights movements began developing at this time in the USA. Also the cold war started up. It was the age of modernity; car ownership allowed families to move out to the suburbs and own bigger homes; and the baby boom was well underway.
The Cold War
Tension between Soviet USSR and the USA began in the 1950s. It was caused by 3 main issues. Ideological differences, namely communism and the US’s fear of communist expansionism; a nuclear arms race and ongoing tensions between the world’s superpowers.
Media
One of the many items that Americans rushed to purchase were colour televisions, bringing ad-vertising and celebrities into the home in a new and influential way.The confusion over women’s roles during that period is evident in the celebrities that graced the screens in the 1950s. There were the blonde bombshells like Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield who were pleasing to the male gaze but who openly used their sexuality in a way that had never been seen before. They took the New Look’s ideal female fig-ure; the hourglass with small, sloped shoulders; large, pointed breasts; cinched waist and voluptuous hips, and Americanized it, intensifying the sexuality with tight revealing garments that looked ready to burst out all over the place. Then there was the influence of countercultures like the beatniks, a movement that de-veloped out of the 1940s that embraced jazz, free love, scruffy beards, berets, and existentialism.
Bombshells
Rock and Roll
A new type of music gained popularity. One that was particularly loved by the teenager; a generation that had time for leisure and social activities and even had some money to spend.
Silhouettes
The the 1950s saw a surgence in counter culture, the prominent silhouette of the era was the hourglass. Hourglass figures were back in style thanks to Dior’s New Look sweeping across the west. Small Sloped shoulders, large pointy breasts, a tiny waist and voluptuous hips. This meant a return to structured underwear and in the 1950s that invovled pointed bras and firming girdles.
Fashion Icon: Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn was the Beatnik style icon. Beatniks were members of a counterculture movement that grew out of a generation that had survived the war and were weary of the post-war move towards consumption and materialism. Their ideas spanned across literature, art, film, and music.
Image: Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face 1957. Another Mag.
Designer of Note: Balanciaga
Accessories
Gloves and hats became necessary again for a proper lady. A return to femininity and appropriatness was clearly affecting all areas of fashion.
Thoughts
After the war and rationing of the 1940s, everyone was in the mood for opulance and luxury. It was also a return to propriety and the rules. During the 1950s, we see a tension between the freedoms women had enjoyed during WW2 when they were needed in the workforce and society’s expectation that traditional gender roles be re-established. Feminists had fought for dress reform since the 19th century, associating corsets and restrictive garments with the lack of freedom women experienced in all aspects of life. The wars and rationing had progressed the women’s movement by requiring simple, practical garments that used less fabric and allowed women the mobility required for work. As women gained access to the workforce, they also experienced financial independence, giving them more control over their lives. The release of Dior’s New Look in 1947 was contentious in that the restrictive nature of the garments signified to some the expectation that women’s lives would once again be without freedom.
Counter culture movements sprouted up all over the place and moving away from society’s norms started to gain more acceptance. People could not forget the strength women had shown during the war and how they had been more than capable of filling men’s roles. It would have been impossible to push all women back into traditional gender spheres, where a lot of experimentation with style occurred. I think the very sexualized stars of Hollywood look like a man’s interpretation of free women as if what an independent woman would want most of all is to be attractive to a man. Unfortunately, I feel that this Hollywood depiction of very sexualized women is still happening today and has affected generations of women’s expectations of themselves.