1940s and 1950s Womens Clothing

Leading the Charge Against Casual Style, Armed With Antique Clothes and a Bike
By Lisa Hix — Tziporah Salamon is used to being photographed—by everyone from New York City tourists to famous "New York Times" street-fashion photographer Bill Cunningham. She's impossible for shutterbugs to resist, when they catch her riding around the city on her turquoise Bianchi, often a symphony of lush colors, decked head-to-toe in exquisite, embroidered, antique fabrics. Salamon also caught the eye of 30-year-old photographer Ari Seth Cohen, who made waves in the fashion world when he launched his...

Traveling the World Via Vintage Skirts
By Lizzie Bramlett — I started collecting vintage border-print skirts that have a travel theme after I pulled a piece of fabric depicting stacks of luggage from a flea-market $2 bin. I bought it, took it home, and made it into a skirt. Since then, I've been hooked on finding new destinations that appeal to me and my sense of travel—captured in a vintage printed skirt. Such skirts actually date to the 1940s dirndl skirt, a straight skirt that was loosely gathered in the waist. The dirndl was perfect for the...

Good Girls and Bad Boys: How to Achieve That Cool '50s Rockabilly Look
By Maribeth Keane and Brad Quinn — Jayne Mansfield is buried in my hometown. You could drive past the cemetery and see her heart-shaped headstone from the road. We had our own historical society, a tiny little museum, if you can even call it that. I remember going on a class trip there once. Some of her things were displayed, like long sequined cocktail dresses and some of her little personal effects. That stayed with me into my adult years: “Wow, as cheesy as my little hick town is, Jayne Mansfield is buried...

Dress Hound Cherie Federau Explains How She Makes Vintage Work for Her
By Maribeth Keane and Jessica Lewis — I’ve pretty much always been a little bit fashion-nutty, ever since I was about 16 years old and I discovered Vogue. I started like a lot of other people, buying vintage to recreate the looks that I saw but couldn’t afford as a teenager. Then slowly over the years, as my hobby turned into more of an obsession, I became interested in the designers behind the labels and it just snowballed from there. Everyone I knew was constantly coming to me to dress them and lend them vintage clothes....