1950's Fashion

In the 1950s, colour films made an enormous impact on cosmetics. The huge cinema screens illuminated the unblemished appearance of stars and caused the make up artist Max Factor to invent an everyday version of the foundation he used called “Pan Cake”. This was a makeup to gloss over skin imperfections. He also brought out a range of eye shadows and lipsticks which helped create the 1950s glamour.

Later in the 50s titanium was added to tone down the brightness of products and this resulted in lips with a pale shimmering gleam.

Magazines taught step by step how to use recently introduced lip brushes and young girls began to blend and mix their own lip colours often having first blotted the lips out with Max Factor Pancake make up.

The idea was extended to create frosted nail varnishes of pink, peach, silver and a host of other colours but in this 1955 image below you can see the colour to wear was red. The model below shows scarlet fingernails and lips and finishes off her outfit with a smart beret.

Left 1955 Makeup & Manicure

In the late 50s the make up company Gala had introduced pale shimmering lipsticks with added titanium. Later Max Factor brought out a colour called Strawberry Meringue which was a pastel pearly pink. They really caught on in the late fifties and early sixties as young girls were frowned upon if they wore brazen red lips, so the softened pink and peach colours were acceptable initially to parents and then became a trend.

As the fifties ended, Vogue magazine had started to coordinate the colour’s of the season’s latest clothes with those of the cosmetics on offer. Eventually all the make up houses followed, producing ranges that picked up colour changes.

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Hats added the final touch of 1950s glamour to a woman or girl’s outfit, particularly in the early fifties. Last year’s dress or suit could be updated easily with a new hat or a fresh ornament such as flowers, an autumnal bunch of acorns and leaves, or a bunch of cherries.

Corsage made of fruits. Similar items were used to trim hats

Balenciaga had first shown the pillbox and it became the hat of the fifties and later the hat of the sixties when it was greatly favoured by Jackie Kennedy. The pillbox often had veiling attached as shown in the header.

Neat pillbox style hat image left is courtesy of anothertimevintageapparel

In the mid fifties glorious hat styles covered less in plumage and more in floral blooms appeared. Some designs consisted solely of bomb like shapes covered with flower petals, almost like a more full blown version of the swimming cap above. Later hats consisted of folds of tulle, organza, nets or swirls of georgette.

Other simple hats included neat beret varieties and also knitted beret hats with tassels or pom-pom.

The jester 4 cornered beret hat was made of felt and velvet and available in a riot of glorious colours and was priced at one guinea or 21 shillings.

The head hugging Baker Boy beret was in a fabric called suedeen and jersey for 22/-.

Generally hats began to lose favour in the fifties as they were unsuitable for the new hairstyles. Women spent more time at the hair salon and the last thing they wanted to do was spoil their latest hairdo with a hat. Fashionable hairstyles began with simple ponytails and ended the decade with complex beehive arrangements.

Milliners could have designed hats more suitable for the new fuller bouffant hairstyles, but they failed to see the possibilities and designs continued as before and they lost the market for hats eventually.

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