Image from www.fiftiesweb.comWe have recently acquired season 3 of Mad Men so I am once more in love with all things vintage. So much so that I have resolved once and for all to learn to sew properly on my lovely-but-largely-untouched sewing machine and make some of my own vintage outfits. I love to trawl the vintage pages of Etsy for goodies but those who are seeking the...ahem...larger items of clothing don't have much luck unless they are prepared to pay considerable sums. Which leads me to wonder how larger women clothed themselves in the 1950s and 1960s. Certainly more women would have known how to sew and dressmakers were used far more widely than they are today but then one realises the horrible truth...they wore girdles, as did almost every other woman after either the perfect 50s hourglass shape or the 60s pencil thin. Well, no girdle for me I'm afraid, I am just going to have to adapt my love for vintage to what works for me. And this in itself makes an interesting point about our own era as compared with the 1950s - I can choose not to wear a girdle. I can choose not to be a particular shape. Or am I deluding myself? Has the girdle simply been replaced today with other feminine constraints?
2 comments:
In my family most women wore most of the time (not in an office of course) "Kittelschürzen":
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41VzuiSHeYL.jpg
When I have a look which clothes my mum had in the 50ties to 80ties - just normal pleated skirts (but no trousers) and blouses, clothes you still see older woman of every size in today.
Bodecea
No, definitely no trousers in the 50s! Or, at least, only for very casual wear... My grandma *never* wore trousers and she lived to be 100!
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