Pondering how we glamorize the past

As a teenager in the 1990s, I questioned some of the hairstyles from the 1960s and thought the look of the 1930s was very glamorous.

Do you suppose the teenager of the 1950s questioned the look of the 1920s, but coveted the glamour of the 1890s?

I actually got my answer to this question when I found out about the Teddy Boys and Girls in Britain in the 1950s. Read more about them here! 

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8 Comments

  1. I still see old ladies who are blatantly still wearing the hairdos they had in the 60s/70s. I think once you find what you like, you stick with it? Regardless of what your place in time is?

    P x

  2. I’ve always wondered the same.
    Like was victorian considered “vintage” back then? I guess that language wouldn’t have been used but was it romanticized in the same way?
    I’ve always loved that scene in Midnight in Paris where Gil finds out that Adriana isn’t at all enamored with the 1920’s, and she actually wishes to go back to 1890’s, while he can’t understand why she doesn’t see the beauty of her own era.
    Maybe a couple of decades from now, we’ll consider the hairstyles of 80s and 90’s super glamorous again – though I doubt it…

  3. Ha! I like it! But you never know. The girls in the 1950s might have poo-pooed the short hair of the 1920s and preferred the femininity of the late Victorian tresses and up-dos.

    And of course you could extend this to now – looking back and shuddering at the 80s, but loving the 50s… Generations, generations…

  4. i dont know, probably they did. although a lot of times in 1940s movies they talked about the ‘gay’ nineties (1890s) and to quote one song ‘when our grandmas and our grandpas were just girls and boys, they seemed to have a lot more fun than we, their party clothes were calicos and homemade courderoys, and the big event was called a husking bee…”
    I think there will always be feelings of nostalgia and missed out glamour in every generation

  5. Believe it or not, I just found some pictures taken in the 50’s showing a trend going on in England at the time, when teenage girls used to wear neo-Edwardian clothes! I think they were called the Teddy Girls, or something like that. I guess people always have a tendency to idealize the past, and that tendency is not only reserved for us! 🙂

Comments are closed.

Welcome to the Bobby Pin Blog! I am Lauren Rennells and as a hairstylist, makeup artist, writer, and generally artistic over-achiever, the Bobby Pin Blog is my outlet for thoughts and research about vintage hair and makeup trends and how to recreate them today. Thank you for stopping by!

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