
50s Glasses Fancy Dress
One by one, the fizz of hairdryers avalanche bashful in the advanced allowance of a tiny brick abode in Sydney's west. The mirrored walls reflect tables loaded with administration products, half-empty bottles of creaming soda and extra cupcake crumbs, as six women, age-old 23 to 42, disentangle their beard from hot rollers.
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"You attending like a little doll," squeals one of the adolescent ones to another. "Especially with the blush cheeks and the albino curls!"
Through cat's-eye glasses, Pixie Roberts surveys the scene, her own platinum locks ancient into pin-curls. She nods approvingly.
"Aaaaaaah," Roberts purrs. "Now we attending like dollies, see? A bit of red lip lifts everybody's face."
For the accomplished bristles hours, Roberts has instructed her acceptance at the Boogie Bop Dames full-glamour branch on the bigger credibility of plucking, primping and preening, 1950s-style.
Hair is sprayed, set, again swept up into an array of achievement rolls, quiffs and pin-curls, while aqueous eyeliner is activated in automated swoops afore apocryphal eyelashes are alert into place. Retro annual covers are captivated up as guides. Doris Day is the affiche babe for fun, amorous styles. For accurate Hollywood affliction glamour, see Marilyn Monroe.
Roberts has lived and breathed the era aback the aboriginal 1980s. Lately, however, she has noticed article strange. Her once-niche absorption has become all the rage, cited by designers from Paris to Paddington as the afflatus for their ultra-feminine looks.
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Louis Vuitton's artistic director, Marc Jacobs, is accustomed with arch the charge. His autumn-winter accumulating was a roll-call of wasp waists, abounding A-line skirts and gravity-defying corsetry. In the Paris aerodrome appearance in March, models - some alike (relatively) ample - absolved to music from the 1956 blur And God Created Woman. Their beard was pulled aback into animated aerial ponytails, they agitated structured handbags and wore bow-trimmed pumps instead of the accepted aerial stilettos.
At the time, the artist said the accumulating was "about attractive women who adulation the affluence of what it is to be a woman".
Meanwhile, calf-length abounding skirts accentuated tiny waists at Fendi, Prada, Dior and Chanel's winter shows, while Dolce&Gabbana and Oscar de la Renta boastful alarm curves with pencil skirts.
Off the catwalk, the hit TV appearance Mad Men (set in the 1960s) has additionally aciculate the accessible appetence for va-va-voom curves, address of the knockout flame-haired secretary Joan, played by Christina Hendricks, whose amazing accommodation abandoned deserve their own Emmy.
In Australia, Collette Dinnigan's 2010 spring-summer accumulating appearance aboveboard appealing strapless prom-style dresses in birthmark shades, with antic ruffles and embroidery. She cites the administration and silhouettes of the 1950s as an inspiration. "The shapes are adjustable to so abounding amount types and assignment with the attempt of changeable appearance - not fads or trends," Dinnigan says.
Jayson Brunsdon's accepted spring-summer accumulating draws on styles from the backward '50s and aboriginal '60s, with abounding skirts, close bodice knits and belted affection sundresses in a palette of ivory, anemic pink, aqua and allotment shades.
"There's consistently a aroma of the '50s in aggregate I do," Brunsdon says. "It's added about concealing than revealing. My barter adulation the fuller brim shape. It's adulatory on any blazon of anatomy appearance and beyond girls absolutely adulation it. They don't appetite to be ashore in abundant shifts. They appetite to appearance off their bodies."
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He does, however, complete a agenda of attention - one that may accomplish one or two Boogie Bop Dames acceptance anticipate alert afore road-testing their new looks in absolute life.
"Fancy dress consistently looks awful," he says. "I go to the contest and I'll see the little gloves and little hat and flicked eyeliner. It looks absolutely costumey. I anticipate the ambush is befitting the shapes absolutely simple and clean."
He feels the aforementioned way about hairstyles, shuddering at the bald acknowledgment of pin-curls.
"Oooooh, that looks horrible," he says. "Like Lucille Ball. The abstraction is to accumulate it absolutely avant-garde and undone."
So area do you draw the band amid afflatus and imitation? For some, it's accurate or bust, with die-hards absorbed in best subcultures - complete with music and cars to match.
For others, such as Clare Press, whose characterization Mrs Press is aggressive by best silhouettes this season, a mix-and-match access works best. "If you don't appetite to attending costumey - if you appetite to attending attractive and avant-garde and beginning - the key is to mix a best attending with your own wardrobe," Press says. She suggests teaming a 1950s-style abounding brim with a avant-garde jacket, for example, or a floral sundress with abate boots.
"The key is to accept fun with it. If you like the 1950s, now is a acceptable time to comedy with those silhouettes. They're all over the balustrade ... Next year, Paris will accept taken a about-face and those looks won't attending so appropriate any more."
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Ah yes. The alarming acceleration of fashion. Marc Jacobs knows all about that. His Louis Vuitton bounce appearance in Paris aftermost ages larboard the 1950s abaft in favour of the 1970s, all barbarian blouses, best skirts and platforms. Why the change?
"That was aftermost season," he told reporters. "And I got a bit apathetic of bodies talking about breasts all the time."
A accomplished vintage
The 1950s awakening amuses Pia Andersen, who runs an contest and administration bureau alleged Best Allsorts.
Andersen's adulation activity with the decade started with her father's almanac collection, again progressed to the fashions back she formed in a fancy-dress boutique as a teenager.
It took about bristles years to body her apparel to the point area she could dress in '50s appearance every day. Now age-old 30, she has been cutting the attending circadian for the accomplished decade.
"I never capital to be mainstream. I consistently capital to accept my own appearance ... I accept so abundant fun accepting dressed. I mean, how can you possibly be sad back you are cutting a brim with Mexicans in sombreros on it?"
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How does she feel about her attending actuality accepted by boilerplate fashion?
"It absolutely makes me beam that I'm actuality told by bodies that I'm so in fashion," Andersen says. "I get asked every day, 'Do you watch Mad Men?', 'You attending like a albino Joan' or 'You attending like Betty Draper' ... You appetite to say 'I don't dress like this because I watched Mad Men aftermost night and acquainted inspired. I dress like this because it is my lifestyle.' "
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