50's fashion

A look back at the era of elegance.

Women in the 1950s were the first to embrace pants for a feminine figure. While the women in the 1940s loved their man tailored slacks, they were gradually losing favor in the 1950s for a more ladylike style. Women's 1950s pants were taboo on TV. 1950s women were secretly wearing pants at home, but it

This week I'm mainly obsessing (and I mean obsessing) over novelty prints, playsuits and mix-and-match holiday wardrobes. I absolutely love the idea of packaged "wardrobes" of interchangeable, co-ordinated pieces, and it seems they were quite the thing in the early 50s.

In the 1950s, the petticoat crinoline made a triumphant return to the fashion scene for skirts and dresses, with a bounce in its step and a swish in its sway.

The biography of Christian Dior

In the new exhibit by photographer Mark Shaw, we (finally) get to see what went on behind the scenes at Paris couture in the 1950s.

The gray days of winter have me looking forward to spring and lighter/brighter clothing. I scanned these from a 1949 insert of the pattern department of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The green ensemble with matching beret in the first picture has my name all over it. I love the color combination. While the 30s is my absolute favorite era, there are so many things I love about the designs of this time period too. So pretty!