1950s Fashion – Old Magazine Articles

The Mid-Century Look in Fashion
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Hair as short as a boy’s and feathered into wisps about the face… Accented waist… Long slim look… Spread-eagle effect about the shoulders obtained by deep armholes, bloused backs, big collars or little capes… Mostly narrow skirts but still plenty of full ones.

– so begins the attached two page Spring fashion review that was torn from the Women’s Page of the January 25, 1950 issue of Pathfinder Magazine. Judging from the six photographs that illustrate the column, Christian Dior continued call the tunes that other fashion designers had to dance to if they expected to attract a following. The New York designers whose efforts were singled out for praise were Lilly Daché, Hattie Carnegie, Ben Reig, Ceil Chapman and Vera Jacobs of Capri Originals.

More about 1950s hairstyles can be read here…

The Mid-Century Look in Fashion
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

More about 1950s hairstyles can be read here…

The Strong Economy and its Effect on Fashion
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

The antidote to the austere fashion deprivations of the 1930s and the wartime fabric restrictions that characterized the Forties arrived in the immediate post-war period when designers were at last permitted to make manifest their restrained cleverness and create an aesthetic style in a mode that was overindulgent in its use of fabric. This fashion revolt commenced in Paris, when Christian Dior showed his first collection in 1947 – couturiers in every style capitol in the West willingly kowtowed and a new era in fashion was born.

Leopard and Zebra Prints Become the Thing, Again
(Quick Magazine, 1954)

Two years before this article went to press, some Delphian at Quick Magazine scribbled these words:

Expect fashion designers to jump on the African trend in literature and entertainment. Examples: four new African [themed] films (Cry the Beloved Country, The Magic Garden, Latuko and The African Queen) to be followed by a Walt Disney African wildlife film.

– next thing you know, down fashion’s runways sashay the teen waifs – all clad as if they were the striped and spotted beasts who prance upon the Serengeti Plain.

Sweaters and Knits Elevated
(Holiday, 1952)

The new women’s sweaters will probably disappoint collectors of pin-up art. They are designed, oddly enough, to appeal to women – the women of taste and discrimination who will wear them.

The Wandering Waistline
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

Looking back, the fashion silhouette of the 1950s is remembered as having a very narrow waistline, but in the early days of the decade, as this 1951 fashion review indicates, the feminine waist was a highly contested battle ground:

Where’s the waist? Paris popped the question, but has yet to give the answer. On the one hand, many leading designers showed a tendency to raise the waistline. But they were challenged by a strong minority that seemed determined to drop it [pictures of both high and low are provided herein]…Apparently, Paris has decreed it the year of the wandering waist. Where it will stop may well be up to American women.

If you’d like to read about the feminine silhouette of the early Forties, click here.

The Swedish Touch
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Jacques Fath and Elsa Schiaparelli
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

This illustrated fashion review shows four images that depicted the sophisticated offerings by Jacques Fath and Elsa Schiaparelli from their respective 1951 mid-summer collections. What the American women who gazed upon these pages learned is that the era of the padded hips was continuing its march into the next decade.

The Look for Spring in ’53
(Quick Magazine, 1953)

Thumbnail descriptions of what numerous European fashion designers were offering during the Spring of 1953.

College Essentials
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

Here are a few short paragraphs accompanied by nine images concerning what the college girls of the early Fifties were wearing:

A girl can still get into college with a sweater and skirt, but for full credit she needs quantities of gadgets. For campus, girls stick to classic Brooks Brothers sweaters, pleated skirts, blue jeans – but go wild on accessories and underwear novelties…

The journalist then went to some effort listing many of the fashionable essentials: stamp bracelets, rhinestone handcuff bracelets, silk pleated turtleneck sweaters and harness-neck bib fronts – all to die for.

White Bucks and the College Look
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

As college girls talked back to school, it was clear that they had switched their allegiances from saddle shoes
to a new favorite: white bucks. The girls predicted they wouldn’t be white long.

Reference is also made to the rounded-button-collar dress shirts that were appearing on the backs of so many college men at that time.

Hair Fashions of the Early 1950s
(People Today, 1952)

Keep it short: that was the M.O. of the hairdressers of the Fifties (as you, no doubt, gathered from this 1949 article) – and this column, accompanied by eight photos, serves as proof. Much of this column pertains to the men who were active in 1952 hair dressing, and their deep thoughts pertaining to pny tails, perms and poodle-cuts.

Click here to read about the short hair craze of the late Forties.

The Prominent Color
(Quick Magazine, 1953)

Red is the color which is going to add excitement to the fall scene. In a season when black is everywhere, the woman who wants to stand out is going to turn to red to express her own sense of drama. Red will be seen in suits, in coats, in after-dark dresses. The color itself is so dramatic that designers rely on cut and line for interest.

Small Fur Hats
(Quick Magazine, 1953)

Pictured herein are three fur hats by Sally Victor (1905 – 1977: Coty Award 1944) modeled by the actress Vanessa Brown (1928 – 1999).

Vera Maxwell and Claire McCardell
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

From the Great Minds Think Alike Department came this small piece about two American sportswear designers, Claire McCardell and Vera Maxwell and their admirable approach in creating a light weather coat that served to both keep women warm in springtime gales, yet accommodate the full, billowing skirts that complemented their feminine forms (as well as the hip padding that accompanied many skirts of the Fifties).

The Milliner’s Collaboration
(Collier’s Magazine, 1951)

In 1951 the finest minds in American millinery were asked to put their collective craniums together and design some hats; each brought something unique to the table – the most humorous design element that appeared in each hat included a telephone!

Collaborators in the struggle to produce a taller plume, a more involved bird’s nest, are the hat designer’s – to whom carrots and cornstalks, bean bean pods and bumper-shoots are all perfectly acceptable decorations for the head.

Setting the Trends from Paris
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

So much had changed in the world as a result of the Second World War, and although those shifting sands had moved much of the fashion industry to New York, the heart and soul of women’s fashion was still in Paris. This article is all about the fashion kings and queens who remained in the French capital. These columns explain what all the finest French designers were up to: Dior, Balmain, Schiaparelli, Fath, Balenciaga, Lanvin etc, etc, etc…

To read further about post-war Paris fashion, click here…

Fur Jewelry and Wraps
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

Attached, you will find three articles on fur in Fifties fashion: one pertains to fur jewelry, the other two stoles, wraps and coats.