Baby Doll Fashions

Sugar and Spice but not Necessarily Nice

Contemporary Baby Doll

Pretty and pouty, sulky and sensual, the classic Baby Doll look is  perhaps a meld of the traditional social meme of female vulnerability and the male fantasy of the child-woman.

Particularly popular in the 60s, the Baby Doll style  took the form of short, often unwaisted dresses or waistlines up under the bust (with cleavage), sometimes with a ribbon sash and knee socks. Baby Doll has always been an ironic look, as, although the theme is infantile innocence, the underlying sub-text is adult sexual allure. 

More recently the look returned with a more obvious sexual oomph, as evident in the picture at right and in the 90s became known as the Kinderwhore look, a kind of grunge retro perversion of the original look.

Horst Buchholz

Hot for Horst

Tousled - Horst Buchholz

The sexily tousled Horst Buchholz, whom I once had a childish crush on, featured briefly but significantly as a hot new thing in the 1960s. A kind of European James Dean with shades of Montogomery Clift, Buchholz had a certain intensity - a darkly brooding attractiveness that set him apart from the usual line-up of clean young Hollywood leading men: he also had great hair in a pre-gel era.

Horst, whose family nickname was, appropriately, Hotte, first came to my (and the world's) attention in the 1959 British B thriller Tiger Bay, which co-starred a wide-eyed Hayley Mills, who was twelve at the time. Young for a leading lady but her charmingly innocent rapport with Buchholz was what elevated Tiger Bay above the regular run of-the-mill British B dramas of the era - that and the gritty back street realism that marked a shift toward British New Wave cinema. Hayley's role was originally intended for a boy but  John Mills, who played a police superintendent in the film, suggested his daughter for the part - fortuitously, as she went on to win a BAFTA for Best Newcomer and was scooped up by Disney soon after.

Chappism

Guest Post by Imogen Reed

"Human Race Reaches Sartorial Nadir"
So reads an article title in one of the UK’s most retro-chic ports of call - The Chap magazine. The subject of its ire? The invention of the ‘sweat pant for work’. To a Chap, being less than impeccably dressed at any time, under any circumstances, is totally unacceptable. There is a quote from their literary hero, Jeeves, butler to the P.G Wodehouse creation Bertie Wooster, the quintessential English gentleman. The quotation, which they display as an encapsulation of this world-view, can be seen on the site, almost as a call to arms:

What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?
There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter.
P.G. Wodehouse
   

Chaps Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, as Wodehouse creations Jeeves and Bertie Wooster

Esther Williams Swimsuits

Esther in a body hugging 50s swimsuit

Swimming Champion, Beauty and MGM Movie Star...
In the 1940s and 50s, there were few water nymphs as spectacularly watchable as US swimming champion, Esther Williams. A natural athlete, in her teens Williams had already busted through a number of national swimming records but unfortunately, the inconvenient outbreak of WW2 put a hold on her plans to take on the 1940 Olympics.

Instead, Williams joined Billy Rose's Aquacade, a swimming, dance and musical show and it was there that she was discovered by MGM talent scouts, on the look-out for a rival to Fox's sporting star, Sonia Henie (an Olympic ice-skater turned film star).

White Dresses

That Virginal Look

Audrey Hepburn, looking demure in a white floral dress 

Something about white spells 'purity' and it's not by accident that in Western culture it was chosen to represent virginal chastity in the form of a wedding dress. White clothing also features in many religious traditions and is the colour of choice for dressing innocent babies. Why should this be? 

Well, there's been various theories about this - one is that white is a colour that is easily soiled, thus it has a kind of precious fragility. Another is that it is the colour of snow, ice and clouds and therefore has an associated cleanliness. A third reason is that it its the opposite of black, which is associated with darkness and wickedness.

Platform Shoes

Elevating Venetian Chopines

Historically, platform shoes were known to have existed in such faraway fashion meccas as ancient Greece, where they were worn onstage to increase the height of certain theatrical characters. They also appeared throughout the centuries, gracing the feet of various characters, such as high-class prostitutes in Venice (the shoes were called chopines), wealthy citizens of China and have even been spotted on such illustrious figures as Krishna in Bhubaneswar, India.

The Bee Gees:The Early Years

Barry, Maurice and Robin 

The Bee Gees weren't always the Bee Gees and in fact when they began their musical career way back in the 1950's as children in Manchester, England, they were known as The Rattlesnakes. Their first gig was as a fill-in act between films at a local cinema, where they performed with two friends. Legend has it they were intending to mime to a popular record of the time when someone dropped it on the way to the gig and they had to sing live.

In 1958, the Gibb family, which included the then 12 year old Barry, his 9 year old younger twin brothers Robin and Maurice and baby brother Andy, moved to Queensland Australia. The boys continued to perform here and there for small change and by this time had changed their name to Wee Johnny Hayes & the Bluecats. The boys' father Hugh had been a drummer and bandleader, so they had grown up in a musical atmosphere. The Gibb boys were ambitious, particularly Barry, who guided his young siblings in the formative stages of their career.