'50s Inspired Retro Fashion - More Than a Passing Trend

The dresses and swimwear of the 50's are probably the most iconic and easily recognized styles of modern fashion history. Ask anyone about 50's fashion, and she can immediately identify the decade's most famous trends: The New Look - dresses with fitted bodices and full circle skirts, worn with crinolines and girdles to create a striking hourglass figure. Form fitting "Wiggle dresses" - sexy, clingy bomshell dresses that hug every curve and were destined to be associated forever with blonde bombshells such as Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Cropped, straight leg capri pants and the crisp white mens' shirt tied in front, as seen on Audrey Hepburn, the 20th Century's most iconic ingenue. Bad girls in cropped denim jeans (borrowed from the boyfriends). Good girls in feminine sun dresses in bright floral prints. Gidget and Annette on the beach in their yellow polka dot bikinis and skirted one piece swimsuits. Fifty years on, and the style of the 50's is still easily distinguishable to anyone with the most minimal fashion awareness. Clothing designers have looked back to the 50's for fashion inspiration to this day, and will likely continue to do so far into the future.

The late 60's and most of the 70's saw an almost 180 degree shift from the fashion silhouettes of the 50's, a reflection, in no small part, of the disillusionment many felt when the promises of the 50's - A prosperous middle class, freedom from war, and trustworthy government - slowly fell apart. Fashion always reflects the feelings of the person wearing it, and 50's style was no exception. Still, by the early 80's, the first waves of nostalgia for the seemingly simple, carefree days of the 50's started to roll in, and before one knew it, 50's retro fashion was born.