…In the fifties not only were the automobiles and the houses ugly looking but so indeed were most of the people. In 1950, for some reason, American women began wearing their hair in an exceedingly short, tightly curled, and decidedly unflattering hairdo known as the poodle cut. And as the poodle cut was succeeded around 1955 by the Italian cut, the rage for short hair mysteriously lasted throughout the decade.
—Fifties’ hairstyles were soft and curly and usually worn short. This involved an arduous process of pin curling and rolling, which often involved sleeping in rollers, pins and a hairnet. Straight hair was out; but even with expert curling techniques, a perm was often required as the poodle frenzy gave birth to a new hairstyle, the poodle cut. The best advocate of this style was, of course, the iconic Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy fame.—Read More:
With their unattractive hairdos, American women of the fifties wore equally unattractive hairdos, Max Factor pancake make-up, and shapeless dresses that hung drably several inches below the knee. Dress design in the fifties, in fact, went from one disastrous look to another, as the tube dress was followed by the sack dress and then by a vogue for wearing crinoline petticoats under bell-shaped skirts.
—“Lucy Gets a Paris Gown” which aired in March, 1956
Ah, Lucy and Ethyl. Always at the forefront of French Fashion. (Perhaps the true originators of the sack?)—Read More:http://noblesavagevintage.blogspot.ca/2012/03/non-traditional-silohuettes-sack-dress.html
The men of the fifties wore their hair either in flat-topped crew cuts or, in the case of the younger, rebel without a cause motorcycle types, in long brilliantined sweepbacks known as ducktails. And men’s clothes of the fifties were typified on the one hand by the Madison Avenue look- a conservatively-cut charcoal-grey-flannel suit worn with a skinny bow tie, a buttoned-down pink shirt, and a narrow-brimmed olive-green hat- and on the other hand by the garb of Middle Western collegians: pegged pants with wide cuffs, two-toned, padded shoulder jackets, and Hawaiian-style sport shirts worn open at the neck.
—In 1957, Governor Orval Faubus announced on statewide television that “Blood will run in the streets if Negro pupils should attempt to enter Central High School.”—click for source…
Thus, in the way that people looked and dressed, in the cars they drove, and in the houses they lived in, and in a myriad of other day-to-day aspects of life, the fifties were egregiously a Golden Age of kitsch. Formica, BBQ grills, hula hoops, Davy Crockett hats, Barbie dolls, plastic pink flamingos. The memory of it all, to lapse into the slang and jargon of fifties vernacular, was enough to make one want to toss one’s cookies, upchuck and barf. ( to be continued)…
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