Lanvin-Castillo-silk-organza-full-skirted-dinner-dress---copy

1960s Fashion – Paris Couture Copies

USA matches Paris high street style in 1962 – US stores showing their ‘line for line’ copies of Paris fashion. Exhibited side by side with the originals, women shoppers are experiencing double vision. This is the time when an American woman pays her money and takes her choice of the new Paris styles. She can pay a fraction of the…

Read More→

GLAMOUR-LIPS---1940S-LIPSTICK-APPLICATOR-booklet

1940s Hollywood Lipstick Applicator

Instant lip glamour in 1949 – From Hollywood comes a sensational new method of lipstick make-up for screen and stage stars, photographers’s models and for your own personal use – Glamour Lips! One of the most difficult make-up problems is made amazingly simple with the Glamour Lips lipstick applicator. This new technique gives you a clean, sharp, contrasting outline every…

Read More→

1959-AUTUMN-TINTS---before-and-after-hair-color

1950s Makeup – Autumn Beauty Tints

Some glowing tips for Fall Beauty in 1959 – A warm and glowing complexion and hair brought to sparkling new life with subtle tints and rinses will put you vividly into glamour this autumn season. Try the effectiveness of this luminous autumn look by experimenting with the make-up colors suggested here. Brunettes with pale skin and hazel eyes. Your autumn…

Read More→

1940s-Fashion---Short-vs-Long-Skirts

1940s Fashion – Short vs Long Skirts

The feminine knee is returned to prim seclusion by Paris – The liveliest argument has raged since February over this years major style change, which returns via Paris decree, a woman’s knee to beneath her skirt. There are naturally many who are not pleased about the dipping hemlines 1947, while there are other young women who have embraced the new romantic…

Read More→

A-Post-War-Paris-Girl-1946

A French Girl in Post War Paris 1946

Profile of a French actress in 1946 – A revealing social document in pictures by Nina Leen of bohemian life in Paris immediately after the Second World War. She is blue-eyed, ash-blonde Barbara Laage, aged 25, an up-and-coming young French actress, enjoying the biggest theater boom Paris has ever know. During the past season, 50 plays have been shown nightly…

Read More→

Fashion-News-1920s---Evening-Frocks-for-1926

Fashion Report 1926 – Evening Frocks from Paris

Four beautiful Parisian dresses – The Paris designers are obtaining graceful effects in evening gowns this season by the skilful use of hip-line accents either at the side or center-front. Sashes and draperies are used for emphasis of this silhouette and the effect is carried upward by means of delightful artificial flowers and ribbon motifs at the shoulder. A pink…

Read More→

Dior-Black-Wool-Suit-Carolle-line-1947

Paris Collection Dior 1947

Vogue Magazine introduces Dior’s New Look – This was Europe’s worst winter since 1870. There was little coal, electricity was rationed and Paris was buried in snow. With fingers stiff, but with ideas running free, designers worked against the cold toward exciting new ideas.Perhaps nowhere but in Paris would the rise of a new designing star cause such general excitement. Not…

Read More→

1940s-College-Style - gabardine dress

1940s College Style

Typical Wardrobe choice in 1949 – 1940s fashion Photos by Nina Leen  Not all young college girls are content with thee gold standard college look of bobby socks, skirts and loose sweaters.Many, influenced by older sisters, friends or simply an urge to grow up quickly, aspire to more mature clothes, thereby facing a double wardrobe problem; where to find outfits…

Read More→

1940s-Fashion---Dipping-Hemlines-1946

1940s Fashion – Dipping Hemlines

Longer Skirts on the way 1946 – Usually the sign of a depression? An uneven hemline with a back slip, is clearly a sneaky device to trick women into longer skirts. This device was last used in 1927. Skirts had gone knee high in the flapper era. Soon they began to dip in the back. These high-low skirts were quite…

Read More→

Alfred-Eisenstaedt--Penn-Station,-April-NYC-1943

The Last Kiss Goodbye – New York April 1943

Poignant farewells in 1940s wartime – A moment in time captured by Life Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt ( best remembered for his iconic Vj day kiss in Times Square in 1945) at Pennsylvania Station, New York,in April 1943.Here is the original report. The grey, insistent feeling of war has washed now into the lives of most Americans. In their home towns,…

Read More→