The Golden Era's *ugliest* clothes

[wahine]

Ladies, this thread really made my day! It's so much fun to look at the weird and not-so-weird dresses, thank you all!

I found two more 1940s hats.
Hitchcock's inspiration (I'm not sure if I should love it or be scared of it):


Gardening's fun (just add some whipped cream - yumm!):


And Marilyn - to me a fashion icon - made some bad decisions, too:




is it a curtain? is it a tablecloth? anything but a dress!




Okay, that last one isn't really "fashion" since it was some kind of a 20th Cent.Fox promo shooting. but it's ugly and still kind of cute

 

[cherry lips]

It seems that early women's pants were embarrassed of themselves and tried to disguise their 'pants-ness' with puffy silhouettes and volumes of fabric.

That's interesting, I've never thought of it that way before! Pants in the thirties were huge as well. Not till the fifities were shape of your legs truly visible. What contradicts this is shorts and playsuits, but they feel very summery and above all youthful. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

 

[Lauren]

Totally agree re: pants widths. I really do think that's why the crotch on a lot of earlier pants patterns (and even into the 40s) were cut so low. It makes them hang off of the body more like a skirt with drape than show off the ...er... booty?

 

[cherry lips]

^I can't believe I haven't thought of this earlier! Were young women the only ones who wore shorts during the golden era?
Shorts were also I dancer/ chorus girl thing:

 

[Miss Sis]

I agree about the way jeans look in catalogs! Especially men's work denim. They always look made out of cardboard! lol In real life I think they're pretty awesome, though.

My Mum told me that in the 1950s, they would buy new jeans - Lee were THE brand in her crowd - and then you sat in the bath wearing them till they were good and wet, which must have taken a while when the denim was so stiff, then wore them around whilst they dried off so they would 'shrink to fit'!!!! How mad is that??? Apparently one of her brothers actually did this, although she didn't mention how successful the outcome was. I hope he chose a good warm, sunny day! lol.

 

[sheeplady]

I know that for my mother (who grew up outside and later lived near a city of 40,000 people), she wasn't able to buy women's jeans until the mid to late 1970s. When she bought jeans she always bought boys (being short and thin and having no ladies options). My grandmother never wore jeans until the early 1980s because she thought ladies jeans were a "fad."

I actually never knew that they made ladies jeans before the 1970s until I came to the FL. Maybe it is just because they were from a small city.

 

[cherry lips]

The face on her stockings is her boyfriend`s face!
(Probably works better than a wedding ring.) http://****yeahmodernflapper.tumblr.com

 

[LizzieMaine]

Jeans were *the* thing for teenage girls to wear in the mid-forties, usually with one of their dad's old dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up and the tails hanging out. "Dungarees" for girls were common in rural areas, and were readily available thru the mail order catalogs, but the wartime fad for them was the first time they really became common for city gals.

There was much viewing-of-alarm of this trend by authority figures, and the official school bans on pants for girls which lasted into the mid-70s in many areas generally began in this era.

 

[Puzzicato]

My Mum told me that in the 1950s, they would buy new jeans - Lee were THE brand in her crowd - and then you sat in the bath wearing them till they were good and wet, which must have taken a while when the denim was so stiff, then wore them around whilst they dried off so they would 'shrink to fit'!!!! How mad is that??? Apparently one of her brothers actually did this, although she didn't mention how successful the outcome was. I hope he chose a good warm, sunny day! lol.

I remember being told to do that with new Levis in the 1980s! Never tried it myself though. Can you imagine the chapping?

 

[Amy Jeanne]

There was much viewing-of-alarm of this trend by authority figures, and the official school bans on pants for girls which lasted into the mid-70s in many areas generally began in this era.

I asked my dad if girls were pants when he was in high school (c/o '59) and he said, half-joking, "Never, it was illegal!" My mom (c/o '70) told me that the ban on girls' wearing pants to school was lifted in her senior year.

 

[ThePowderKeg]

LizzieMaine, you just helped me make sense out of why my grandmother LOVED it when I started wearing my dad's old jeans with men's dress shirts in high school. I cuffed the jeans and usually rolled up the sleeves on the shirts, too. It drove my mother nuts, but my grandmother actually said something like, "We girls all wore that when we were kids" and I thought she was making that up, since there are no photos to support this. I now realize this is because my family only took photos on special occasions, when no one would have worn jeans.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In the summer of 1945, the March Of Time newsreel series did an episode on the emerging phenomenon of "The Teenage Girl." Here is a clip featuring some definitive views of how that generation dressed on its own time, and when dressed for school.

The complete short ran on TCM in January -- I have it on videotape, but am not able to upload, but hopefully some of the folks here saw it. It really does capture the reality of the times for young women and how they viewed the world. Delicate flowers they weren't.

Life magazine photo from 1944 showing "the typical after-school look." The jacket belonged to her older brother, who was off in the service.

For what it's worth, I don't consider this an especially ugly look -- even though it's sloppy by Lounge standards, it's extremely practical for a fifteen-year-old in wartime America. This was a generation that was a lot busier than its older sisters, and they didn't have a whole lot of time to sit around fussing.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Haha. That's a 1944 "after school" look, but I went to high school in the early 1990s and that was the typical "to school" look! She'd have fit in with the grunge gals lol They wore used men's jeans and the flannel coats/tops. Looked just like this gal, sans the smile! Weren't so "edgy" afterall lol

 

[kamikat]

The face on her stockings is her boyfriend`s face!

I LOVE those stockings!!!

 

[kamikat]

My Mum told me that in the 1950s, they would buy new jeans - Lee were THE brand in her crowd - and then you sat in the bath wearing them till they were good and wet, which must have taken a while when the denim was so stiff, then wore them around whilst they dried off so they would 'shrink to fit'!!!! How mad is that??? Apparently one of her brothers actually did this, although she didn't mention how successful the outcome was. I hope he chose a good warm, sunny day! lol.

I remember my sister doing this in the 80's with her Jordache jeans. She would also lie down on the bed to zip them up.

 

[cherry lips]

I love this look. To me the terms "vintage" and "casual" don't contradict eachother. I only get dolled up on weekends, but I always look pretty vintage, even in slacks and without make-up (thanks to the cut of the slacks, the rest of my clothes and accessories, my hair, and my cat-eyes). I'm like an incognito moviestar who only shows her identity at red carpet events.

 

[Eva Morsikova]

The face on her stockings is her boyfriend`s face!
(Probably works better than a wedding ring.) http://****yeahmodernflapper.tumblr.com

I'm going to have to tack that up to the bootleg whiskey. The rest of her getup is great but...the legs. Though it's better than getting a tattoo with a lover's name on it.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Maybe I'm missing some sort of gene, or maybe my glasses don't work properly, but everyone I know disagrees with me on this one:

I *loathe* this outfit that Clara Bow wears in her movie The Wild Party (1929). It has all the elements for ugliness and unflatteringness:

-sleeveless
-buttoned-up collar
-pleated skirt

I dunno. I just think it's her worst movie outfit. So ugly.

 

[Eva Morsikova]

fftopic:She's a slim gal with chunky arms like mine! *embraces her Clara Bow arms*

 

[Miss Sis]

Nope, I agree with you Amy - it's hideous! What the heck is with the sleeveless blouse with a tie????