Clothes in the 50s and 60s

[Alarmset]

On TV and in films, even "poor" people wear beautifully cut clothes. People like midwives, secretaries, struggling musicians.

Was that how it was, "cheap" clothes didn't exist or is that just for TV?

Many people did dress up for photos and my mum would always comment how casual snaps were often much nicer. Tbh everything we take as a family nowadays are my mum's " casual snaps" 😉 but maybe because we aren't Instagram / filters type of photographers. So maybe that's the modern iteration of the Sunday Best photo.
I remember the 50s photo of my parents and 1 month old all very dressed up and posing with baby in their very stylish looking wool suits. They just missed the rock and roll era.

That's interesting Floisme. I thought most people had box brownies, but again, just my experience.
My grandmother worked for a photographer and was a keen amateur. We have masses of photos or "snaps" from the twenties and thirties of my mother and friends. Lots of big family gatherings, holidays with strolls along the prom and my mother in the Women's League of Health and Beauty (black knickers and white satin blouses 😀).
Before that they tend to be studio portraits. The colour ones start in the fifties.

Photos of Dmum from the late forties/early fifties show a beautiful very elegant woman in well fitting clothes. Our family are working class so no money to be wasted.

She managed to look so lovely by buying a very few good quality clothes and looking after them - a new coat was a major purchase thought about for weeks, it needed to match shoes and hat and handbag because she couldn't afford multiples. Shoes and stockings were mended, not replaced.

DH wears my DDad's tweed jacket bought in the early sixties.

@Bettybantz
Agree no leggings but I never saw my Gran's neighbour without her stretch jersey ski pants on in the 60s.
But back then women seemed generally to be expected to look nice for other people's benefit, rather than to suit whatever they were doing, or for their own comfort.

HilaryThorpe if people ever use our old family photos as social history they will conclude that all we did was go on holidays and go to christenings I guess my parents must have had a camera, otherwise there'd be no photos at all, but I've no idea what kind it was and it only ever came out on special occasions. I do remember asking for a Kodak Instamatic for my 18th (1974) and feeling very sophisticated!

My mum made me an orange linen culottevdress with a full length feature zip. When I was about 12 in 1964. V fashionable.

I do have a very poignant "snap" taken in the garden of my mother as a toddler with my grandmother and my grandfather in uniform, off to the First World War. He did come back, but badly wounded.
And yes to the orange outfits. I had a skirt, coat and trousers made by my Mum in bright orange circa 1966.

Oh and my grandmother dressed for comfort. Apart from weddings and funerals, she always wore trousers, a shirt and tie. 😂

Girls were taught needlework at school

DM was a newly wed in the early 60s. She had been taught to sew by her MIL who had been a seamstress. So DM made most of her own clothes, and ours when we were born in the 60's and 70s. I remember her cutting up a 50's circular skirt to make dresses for my sisters and me, which she'd made herself after rationing ended.
Things she bought were things like coats or were from marks and Spencer when everything was mainly British made.

My ex- mil made me a peg-bag to hang on the clothes line.
It was a beautiful flower patterned material.
When I told her I thought it was lovely she said “yes I thought so, it’s made from my going away dress when I got married.”
She had married over 30 years before.
Pity her son didn’t turn out as wonderful as her.

I have some of my parents clothes from late 50s, they were not well off people. The items are really strong & well made (a coat, dressing gown etc) , and made of much heavier and better quality fabric than is common today

On the other hand, people had much fewer items of clothing - 1 to wash, 1 to wear & 1 to hang in the cupboard was considered 'enough' (for mens trousers, jackets for example)

Also, everyone wore vests/undershirts, petticoats, and for women support underwear, girdles etc. Those give everything a better shape (hence lookingh tailored) and save wear and tear on the outer garments.

People also changed to 'home' clothes & washed jumpers/skirts etc much less frequently (once a season was considered enough, & those were handwashed) - so fabrics lasted longer & stayed in the correct shape

I wonder how many item of clothing the average woman (from different sectors of society) had in 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and so on.

There were a lot of housewives wearing voluminous pinnies with their stocking rolled down around their knees because they were too tight around the thigh, and their hair in permanent curlers. i remember women who dressed like that day in day out. It is the 60s equivalent of slobbing in lounge wear.

The majority of the population in the 50s had recently endured rationing and war time austerity. Rationing was only one step up from a starvation diet and most of the people in photographs from that time were carrying very little spare flesh. Fitted clothing looked very good on them.

@DespairingHomeowner

I have some of my parents clothes from late 50s, they were not well off people. The items are really strong & well made (a coat, dressing gown etc) , and made of much heavier and better quality fabric than is common today

On the other hand, people had much fewer items of clothing - 1 to wash, 1 to wear & 1 to hang in the cupboard was considered 'enough' (for mens trousers, jackets for example)

Also, everyone wore vests/undershirts, petticoats, and for women support underwear, girdles etc. Those give everything a better shape (hence lookingh tailored) and save wear and tear on the outer garments.

People also changed to 'home' clothes & washed jumpers/skirts etc much less frequently (once a season was considered enough, & those were handwashed) - so fabrics lasted longer & stayed in the correct shape

You'd also have things like garment shields (i.pinimg.com/originals/25/ff/ab/25ffabfb59aa29992b932508b021ecc0.jpg ) to go in the armpits of dresses, so they could be changed out after a while and avoid damage to the garment itself.

I don't think people did "casual" in the past.

My Grandad wore a shirt, tie and knitted tank top every single day. He wore a hat if he left the house.

My Nanna wore dresses and a knitted cardigan, tan coloured tights and court shoes. She wore hats and head scarfs out of the house too.

They were retired for about 25 years until they died apporx 10 years ago, and they dressed like this every day, even if they were just watching daytime tv and doing chores.

Nothing like my working from home outfit at the moment

As I've mentioned upthread, I agree the clothes looked nice, but they must have been tight, itchy, scratchy, constricting.

My dad was born early 50’s. His mum made the vast majority of all their clothes. (9 DC plus her own and her husband’s) From whatever she had access too. He remembers being bullied in school because the logo on the flour sack that she’d made his PE shorts out of was still visible on the outside of them despite her having turned it inside out to make them. Everything that could be handed down, was, even if it didn’t fit well. Anything that was beyond wear was repurposed into something else that could be worn. He remembers the delight of one Christmas receiving a box from their relatives in America. It had second hand clothes for them. It was the first time any of them had seen a sweater with a character on it. Theirs were always knitted by my grandmother. I can’t imagine how she would react now to seeing the waste and poor quality in the clothing industry.

Slightly off topic but pyjama parties were around in the 1930s and there were lounging pyjamas which were usually very beautifully cut and in wonderful silks and satins, a far cry from today's loungewear.

Although I was around in the 60s I don't remember actual clothes but I remember crimpelene and bri-nylon.

DM was teenager/young woman in 50s n 60s
Much fewer items of clothing - lots of home sewing or tailor mades - no fast fashion - clothes were more expensive as less chain stores and more independent retailers or boutiques
As a child of the 60s we had school clothing or uniform which lasted a week before washing - ‘old play clothes for Saturday’ then a Sunday best outfit
My entire wardrobe would consist of 1 dress worn every Sunday - 2 skirts and 2 tops for school rotated - plus old worn out or grown out of items and underwear
We had one pair of shoes or sandals - one of either pumps or trainers and wellies if wet

I love vintage clothes, but they are rarely 'relaxing' to wear, but they are made so well, but the women must have been tiny.
I'm a current 14 (probably an 18 back then!) and struggle with many of the vintage fits.

@LadyWithLapdog

As I've mentioned upthread, I agree the clothes looked nice, but they must have been tight, itchy, scratchy, constricting.

As were the dresses my mother made me wear as a child to go to church (1950s). I remember being horrified by her girdle - which incorporated suspenders - and thinking I didn’t want to grow up to wear a constricting item of underwear like that. The advent of tights was a blessing.

Pajama parties were common in the 1960s and 70s where I grew up. I remember watching The Monkeys on TV with my friends. We were all crazy about them. RIP Michael Nesbitt aka Wool Hat.

People owned less clothes than they do now and they looked after them. Also the shops weren't flooded with the same amount of cheap clothing as now.

Photos are misleading because cameras were still a novelty so, if you knew you were going to have your picture taken, you dressed the hell up.

I don't agree - I was a child in the 60s and there are plenty of photos of me doing ordinary things, and certainly not dressed the hell up.