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We are often asked for items to be worn to 50’s events such as the well-know ‘Goodwood Revival’ and it is apparent that a fair amount of confusion exists as to what is correct and what might be wrong.
The fifties woman would have been seen in quite a wide selection of different outfits, largly depending on their age and their lifestyle. Whilst the average ‘housewife’ might have a pair or two of ‘slacks’ or ‘stirrup pants’ for casual or working in the garden, the majority would be seen most days wearing a ‘day dress’ or a skirt with pretty blouse, paired to a twin-set or light cardigan if the weather was cool.
Most fifties skirts were just below knee down to calf-length and were generally very full, with an ‘A’ line flare. Full petticoats or crinolines would have been worn underneath the skirt for more ‘dressy’ or formal occasions.
Pleated skirts in those early days of modern synthetics were generally single colour and very full, (often full-circle) usually with accordion or sunray pleats. Relatively few 50’s dressy frocks seem to have been produced with perma pleated skirts, perhaps because the ‘feel’ of the synthetics was rather heavy for such relatively light garments. There were however, quite a few accordion gowns produced for evening-wear, maybe encouraged by the popularity of the style amongst the film stars of the era.
So what would we recommend for a 50’s look? If required for a theatrical production then for depicting a typical ‘housewife’ we’d suggest looking at the ‘house dress’. Definitely not as full as most skirts from the era, these garments usually had box pleats or a combination of box and knife pleats. Perhaps someone was looking at the practicality of wearing a full billowy skirt around the house whilst trying to attend to domestic matters? We have several examples of ‘house dresses’ here at ‘Just-Pleats’ and they are all very light in weight (by modern standards) with sharp, tight, smallish pleats. Interestingly, the material for some of them includes nylon variants that seem almost too light for everyday wear. The heavier-weight of most accordion pleat skirts would have usually been reserved for the colder weather and might well have been worn with a light to fullish petticoat to give it more ‘body’.
For more dressy occasions, women might have been seen in either a full skirted frock or skirt and blouse combination. As previously mentioned, pleats were not so commonplace here, but they were not exactly rare either. Once again, like with the house-dress, these dressy-frocks would have sat just below the knee and for this reason can be easily substituted by some 70’s garments because genuine 50’s items are becoming extremely hard to come by. Patterns were generally either very fine, like polka-dots, or large and floral. It would have been normal for the skirt to have been worn over a full petticoat on such occasions.
*Don’t forget that the typical fifties ‘daughter’ would almost certainly be seen out with her mum in an almost identical outfit, right down to the cardi’ or twinset.*
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