What sparked your fascination with the "Golden Era"?

[fluteplayer07]

Here's how it went:

-Buying a Tilley to keep off the sun.
-Buying another Tilley for the winter.
-Buying a fur-felt Tilley because it looked better.
-Finding this site by looking for reviews of the Tilley.
-Buying a vintage hat because this site says vintage is better.
-Joining this site to research vintage hats.
-Buying another vintage hat because one wasn't enough.
-Buying another 5 vintage hats because I became addicted to eBay.
-Buying a vintage sport coat to justify the hats.
-Buying vintage shoes to justify the jacket.
-Buying some more vintage jackets to justify the shoes.
-Buying a vintage sport shirt for casual wear to justify vintage dress clothes.
-Buying more vintage hats for the heck of it.
-Buying a couple modern fedoras because part of being a hat collector is
supporting the industry.
-Buying a custom fedora because everyone who has vintage hats has at least
one custom hat.
-Wholeheartedly embracing a vintage lifestyle to justify the 17 hats I now
own, the shoes, the shirt, the multiple jackets, and the vintage (or neo)
clothing/items I already bought. (Including, but not limited to, pocket watches,
fountain pens, self tie bow ties, replica 1945 briefcase, and original
advertisements for vintage items I now own)
-Am I addicted? No!

 

[coble]

what got me started in my fascination with the golden era was the music. I got highly into swing dancing with my sister, and wanted a zoot suit hat thats what i called them, and so i looked online and i found a godfather hat. It was just a simple wool one, it was too big for my head but i wore it anyways. I would wear a straw trilby as well. It all started when i was in 9th grade. I'm 27 so thats not that far back. But I did also watch a lot of classic style movies like indiana jones, road to perdition, stuff like that. As i have gotten older i learned more about hats, and what were the best ones to buy, and makes.
I literally am a hat fanatic i love hats, especially fedoras. I have recently been designing my own style of fedora. I am having the lady who makes limpia hats custom make mine. When i finally get it made i will post a photo.
But theres also just a lot of class back then. I remember seeing a photo of my great grandparents and they looked so classy. So thats how i got started.

 

[Miss Scarlet]

I think my upbringing paved the way, as it were, to a vintage lifestyle. My primary school was private and very much run as though it were a 40s/50s school. The manners, courtesy and the whole ethos was very, very old fashioned. As I grew older and more experienced, I saw how ill-mannered people of my generation were and how inconsiderate (obviously not speaking for everyone). Not only this, but how it seems to have become acceptable behaviour. I craved at a young age for a time when manners and consideration for others was not only required, but lauded.

As some other people have mentioned on here, I've always felt different from everyone else anyway. I grew into a grunger and then a goth to try and demonstrate how I felt different, but it was never really me. Around the age of 20 I began to want to look much more feminine and glamorous and dress to suit me (which was never goth). Vintage clothes just seemed to suit me better as modern cut clothes don't fit me too well.

Another element of the Golden Era that fascinated me always and I still long for, is that everyone seemed to know their place. People had roles to fulfill, especially during WWII and they just got on with it because they had to. As much as I do think it's fantastic that people nowadays have the choice to do pretty much anything they want, I feel there is too much choice, but also too much pressure to do everything. Especially speaking as a woman, it is still desired to have the career, the family, do the cleaning, the garden, charity work and generally be a superwoman. I want to be a housewife and mother, my partner feels the same and he wants to be the breadwinner, but still people tend look down on a woman who is fulfilled by doing this sort of role.

Gosh this is turning into quite the rant. My mother and father separated about a year ago, my mum moved out 3 weeks ago and it was difficult. I turned to the old films and musicals because they are so comforting. I believe highly in family and marriage, but my mother didn't. These films offered me the sort of guidance and marriage and family life to aspire to and that I never got from my own mother. You can't really get that sort of encouragement from modern films I've found, more because a lot of the elements from the old films that were about families were somewhat mundane compared to films now (take the old Cheaper by the Dozen compared to the remake for example).

Finally, my dad always used to play Edith Piaf when I was a child and that sparked my love for old music. I can listen to old music all day long and never get bored. Part of my enjoyment of it is that it hasn't been overproduced as it has now. If you couldn't sing in the Golden Era, you wouldn't perform or be recorded, that was it. Now they take talentless individuals and buff their voice up so much that it passes for singing.

I think my massive rambling has ceased.

Thanks for reading xxx

 

[swinggal]

- Spending a lot of time at my Nana and Pop's house (almost everyday while mum went to work) before I started school surrounded by all their 30s and 40s things and hearing their stories about the depression and my dads stories about being a kid in the early 40s. I used to pour over all the old photos they had too (which are now mine) from the 1900s onward of relatives - they fascinated me and so did the clothes.

- My dad loved jazz and used to play the trumpet and his older brother played in a big band in the late 50s - so there was always great music at nan and pop's house.

- Watching movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s from the age of about 4 onwards on Saturday afternoons and being fascinated by how beautiful the women were and how dapperly the men dressed.

 

[kinetickyle]

My grandparents were always playing Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller records, so I guess that would be first chronologically. However, I think the pivotal moment was when I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not only did that movie interest me in ancient history, but also in the fashions of the time. This led me to watching Bogart and Bacall, which led me deeper down the rabbit hole of jazz and art deco.

 

[Gingerella72]

I've always felt out of sorts in life, but never could put my finger on why exactly.

I'm an only child to older parents (they were in their early 40's when I came along) who were married in 1952 and I grew up listening to stories of life back then. Not only was my dad older when I was born, he was the youngest of 13 kids and so all of his brothers and sisters - my aunts and uncles - were old enough to be my grandparents. I remember sitting and listening enthralled to all of them reminisce about the "good old days" growing up in the teens, 20's and 30's.

My dad is a jazz musician and so I grew up listening to Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole and the like.

As a child I fell in love with Laura Ingalls Wilder and read the Little House books over and over again. I remember pining for the "olden days" as I called them - this at 8 years old.

But as my teen years hit I became a true child of the 80's and the MTV generation. I dressed like Debbie Gibson and had mall bangs. I turned my nose down on anything old and "out of fashion."

One day in my senior year of high school ('89/'90) I was flipping through channels one day and landed on AMC, which was playing Kitty Foyle with Ginger Rogers. I was enthralled, and confused....I had heard of Ginger Rogers, but I thought she had blonde hair and sang and danced, and here she was with dark brown hair and acting in a serious role.....I had to learn more! So I became obsessed with watching old movies (and obsessed with Ms. Rogers as well).

But as much as I enjoyed watching old movies and occasionally listening to old swing music, my interest in the Golden Era was casual in nature. I went through young adulthood more enthralled with the 19th century and all things Victorian.

In 2007 I was randomly searching the internet for Victorian clothing and hairstyle information when I stumbled across a website that showed how to do 1940's hairstyles, and some further random searching led me here to the Fedora Lounge. I was fascinated! You mean, there's actually people who dress this way everyday!? There's people who intentionally decorate their homes this way!? It had never, ever occurred to me before....though I'm a bit sheltered from what's going on on the left and right coasts. Perhaps if I'd ever lived in a more metropolitan area, I might have encountered people living vintage lifestyles. [huh]

I've learned so much from this site, both from the people who share their vast knowledge of the era, and from links that have led me to explore other places on the interwebz. I'm soaking up like a sponge all the information I can get on the Golden Era. In the 3 years I've been a member here I've discovered the square hole I finally fit into, and when I'm here or on other vintage related sites/blogs, I no longer feel out of sorts with life.

 

[Good Ol' Days]

I have always had an interest in the 1920's...just everything about it! Ok, except maybe the Depression, haha...so from there I ended up looking into the 40's.
I always had an interest in WW2, and then my interests branched out from there into other things 1940's related...I also love the 1920's-30's.
I think also spending loads of time with my grandparents had something to do with it--my grandpa was in the Navy, and my grandma was a nurse.
I also used to watch The Little Rascals every afternoon when I was at their house, and there was just something 'peaceful' and unique about the whole black & white thing..and the old days, of course.
People looked smart, pretty, etc., and I definitely took an interest in that (as compared to what is fashion these days, yuck).
For me, the 1920's-40's were truly different and unique...which are two words that perfectly sum me up!
Also, my dad was always listening to his 50's music, so I took a fleeting interest in that era but it didn't really appeal to me. So I started going back down the line =)

 

[RetroLady89142]

I never felt like I fit in during this day and age. I love so much about the Golden Era.....the manners, the social graces, the movies, the radio serials, the way that women were women and men were men. I am so very happy to have found 'The Fedora Lounge' and hope to get to be friends with some like minded people.

 

[hailey greenhat]

Unlike most of the people here, i didn't know my grandparents, and though my parents are "older" for my age (they grew up in the 60's) and i have much older siblings, i don't really have an excuse. I'd say skipping school watching Turner did it. Realizing Jimmy Stewarts and Humphrey Bogarts don't exist was heart wrenching. shakeshead
Mom says i hitched a ride back (to earth) with my fraternal twin early.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

My ma says from the time I could walk and talk I was an old soul. There's many pictures of me at 3 or 4 years old dressed up in ties, wearing my great-grandpa's fedoras and such things as that. I always liked dressing up nice like folks did 'in the old days' and my family's beliefs are very old-fashioned and were pounded into me all through life, so I guess I just turned out to be old-fashioned. Almost my entire life, I've always dressed slightly vintage. As I got older and gained more knowledge, my vintage styles became more accurate and pronounced. I have relaxed them a bit in recent years just for the fact of there being a time and a place and the factory, working on cars, and such aren't really a place for Thom McAn's and Slacks, though I wear them when I can!

 

[Grant Fan]

Well as long as I can remember I have loved black and white photos and movies, when i was little I used to tell people they were better because in you imagination you could make things whatever color you wanted. But what really started it was when I was 12 a family friend told me I looked like Rita Hayworth. I began to research and the fascination grew.

 

[FountainPenGirl]

Hi all, It's fun to read everyone's story. I find that the late '40's and early '50's is an era I connect with very much. As a kid growing up much of the world of the '30's/'40's/50's was reality to me even though it was the '60's and '70's. Most of my surrounds were an intact environment of these previous decades. So as a kid I never had a sense of age to anything. It was all reality and new to me. As my tastes evolved it was all a product of these eras and not at all current to the time. This included music, styles, entertainment, everything. I was an only child and wasn't around other kids much. If I wanted to be a part of what was going on I had to learn to interact with the adults so I grew up fast. As I grew older I expected to find more of the world I had always known. I never had much in common with kids of my own age and didn't fit in. It took me to my teen years to realize that I was normal but was a product of previous generations. After finding what the current scheme of things were, I found it a sad disappointment to what I had know all my life. So I decided to stay where I was at and have spent the rest of life doing just that. So I haven't really become a vintage person. I've just always been here to start with. I've worked hard at surrounding myself with what makes me comfortable and deal with the current world where necessary but my personal life exists in another time. One of the few new age things I enjoy is the computer and internet but I just use that to find more old stuff. I look at that as a trade off. Years ago we could just pick up the Wards catalog and order what we like brand new. Now we use the computer to hunt and find what we like after it's 60 years old or what ever era you like.
In another thread they talked about living a '50's life. Well my husband and I live little different than that everyday. He graduated from high school in 1956 so it's no stretch for him. He still combs his hair dresses and looks much the same as then. Being that I've been doing this all my life I've accumulated a lot of stuff. Most of the things I live with everyday would be considered vintage. This includes vehicles, household stuff. We're even putting a wood cookstove in the house that I plan to use.
Well now that I've put you all to sleep that's my story

 

[lframe]

Kindred Spirits

That's what all of you are, kindred spirits. I have never fit in with my generation. Not at all. Now, nearing 40, I am only trying to be what I am meant to be. Me.

Mine started by being raised by my Grandparents, who lived thru the Great Depression, my Grandfather and all of my Great-Uncles going off to WWII. Miraculously, they all came home.

It's a gentler time. A time that I long for based on certain qualities I see. Honor, character, chivalry, and a whole other myriad of descriptive words. But, I don't have to describe them you all, as you know.

When I was younger, I as obsessed with playing dress up with my mom's old dresses, sewing similar ones for my Barbie's and reading every thing I could on the era's from the 20's-40's. It's just in my blood.

 

[stillsparkling]

Classic film started my interest in the Golden Era. While growing up, I watched all the classic musicals and Christmas movies: It's A Wonderful Life, White Christmas, The Wizard of Oz, etc. It was about 4 years ago when I started watching even more old movies and tv shows and even listening to old radio programs that my interest really peaked. I absolutely adore the fashion, decor, and just...everything. It was simpler time that I wish I could have experienced.

I've always been interested in history, though, and I loved hearing old family stories and still do. I guess I've always been an old soul because I feel like the past has always been apart of me for as long as I can remember.

 

[Mav]

The Thin Man movies.

 

[Derek WC]

How I became a resident of the 1940's is basically how Miss Scarlet had, except in a six year period starting at nine or so (I am fifteen now).

It started as watching M*A*S*H because my Grandpa did, than listening to Tears for Fears and The Animals, watching Perry Mason and The Twilight Zone. Later I got into Chubby Checker and watching What's My Line, The Andy Griffith Show, The Outer Limits, and more Perry Mason.

Now I listen to Glenn Miller, The California Ramblers, Bing and Bob Crosby, The Diamonds, and much more, and watch everything I did before with Leave it to Beaver and the Turner Classic Movies. Ahh yes, and no more Tears for Fears or the Animals

 

[lord_k]

This cover:

VU magazine, April 1933
Cover by Andre Kertesz

Seen it when I was ten.

 

[Gilboa]

There are many eras gone by that fascinate me, each for different reasons.


But, and that is why I found The Fedora Lounge, my farvourite era would have to be 1920-1940s.

I like the manners, the attitude to life people had in those days. The fighting for survival and the cameraderie amongst people. There was generally more respect for each other and more politeness.

People had, in some ways, more freedom. There was no health and safety that stiffled every one move you take, no was no scaremongering nanny state, changing its mind each day about what is good for you and what isn't. People had a healthy pride in themselves (which seems to be slowly dissapearing)

And although times were harder back then, I do belive people's lifes was fuller and in some ways more exciting. There was a sense of achievement.

 

[draws]

There are many eras gone by that fascinate me, each for different reasons.


But, and that is why I found The Fedora Lounge, my farvourite era would have to be 1920-1940s.

I like the manners, the attitude to life people had in those days. The fighting for survival and the cameraderie amongst people. There was generally more respect for each other and more politeness.

People had, in some ways, more freedom. There was no health and safety that stiffled every one move you take, no was no scaremongering nanny state, changing its mind each day about what is good for you and what isn't. People had a healthy pride in themselves (which seems to be slowly dissapearing)

And although times were harder back then, I do belive people's lifes was fuller and in some ways more exciting. There was a sense of achievement.

Very well stated, my friend. Please have heart. We are soon to head back to that time. Given the current political state and the words of an Imperial Japanese Naval commander once stated and I paraphrase: We have awaken a sleeping giant.

We are about to embark on a journey back to the 20s, 30s and 40s once again and our spirit for freedom, individual responsibility, self reliance, a dissapearance of the entitlement syndrome, kindness to our fellow man, spritual awakening, "Charity to Others", a reawakening of our faith and common sense will soon return.

With that will come some pain. The kind of pain that our parents and grand-parents endured. Those who have nurtured us into a sense of entitlement, greed, imorality and corruption will fade back into the shadows from whence they came and the sense of hope and will soon return and we'll all be the better for it.

Have faith Gilboa and know that Stability can't exist without Chaos and Chaos can't exist without Calm. We are headed back to those times and we will all be the better for.

 

[davidraphael]

"Pennies from heaven" 1978?

I've always loved this 3 disk set of The Pennies From Heaven! When I was younger I wasn't a big fan of American dance hall bands - I found them too brash - I much preferred the soft, dreamy quality of the British bands, such as Ray Noble and Al Bowlly.

My interest in the golden era comes from several sources: I was always a big fan of old movies: As a kid I loved Hitchcock movies and every Saturday morning I watched Laurel and Hardy shorts, as well as Republic type serials: Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars and Rocketman were real favourites.

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Music-wise I was brought up with swing - my parents listened to a lot of Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Glenn Miller et al as well as artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, and Miles Davis , who of course were all playing songbook standards by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Rogers and Hart, Hoagy Carmichael

In the late 70's an early 80's when I was growing up it seems that there was a real resurgence of 1920's-1940's culture: Indiana Jones movies, Agatha Christie adaptations, etc. And of course Woody Allen was making movies such as Radio Days, The Purple Rose of Cairo, etc, and all his soundtracks contained golden era music by artists such as Django Reinhardt, Teddy Wilson and Duke Ellington.