I love movies set in or made in the 1950s. I could watch Grease, Crybaby or The Girl Can’t Help It any day. I was thinking about how fashion is used to let the audience know the characters of the people on the screen. For example, in Grease you have the good girl-Sandy and the bad girl-Rizzo. It is pretty obvious who is who based on their clothes. Sandy wears pastels and poodle skirts, ties her hair up in a ponytail and is very fresh-faced.
I had a heck of a time finding a picture of Sandy pre-makeover.
Rizzo on the other hand, looks like trouble. When we first see her she is in all black and it wearing a tight pencil skirt, her outfit shows off her figure and she is wearing red lipstick. And she wears pants (gasp!) during the film.
of course by the end of the movie, the roles of the two women have swapped with Sandy donning her skin-tight leather pants.
We often see the “good girl” in a-lines and soft colors and the “bad girl” in darker or richer colors and a sexy clothing like pencil skirts.
I like to think of myself more of a Frenchie, she straddles both realms and can pull off both styles. And I always loved her pink hair 🙂
Of course there is the Donna Reed, ideal housewife, vacuuming in pearls. She is the epitome of femininity, all grown up, married to the high school quarterback with 2.5 kids. I love this she looks so pretty.
Then we have the Jayne Mansfield Bombshell. She is super sexy without being trashy. You don’t get more glamorous.
My personal style is more rockabilly than authentic vintage, I like bright colors, big hair, tattoos, and six-inch stilettos.
My style is a mix of the Donna Reed and Jayne Mansfield, I love to look classy but I want to look sexy at the same time. Plus, I’m not a teenager anymore so I relate a lot more to the Housewife in style and personality, as well as daily routine 🙂 It is hard to clean in super tight pencil skirts, so I have been collecting a lot more swing skirts and dresses for daily wear.
If you don’t know what your style is, I recommend watching some old movies, doing some google searches, and play with different looks until you find what suits your body and personality best.
Do you have a vintage style personality? What characters do you relate to from movies of the era? Do you dress more like a bad girl, a good girl, a housewife, a bombshell, a mix of a few or all?
Pacifiers&Pinups 