My favourite decade for style: The Fifties

In the first of a new series in which guest writers tell us about their favourite decade for style, journalist and lindyhopper Katie Allen champions the Fifties rockabilly look.

I first got into Fifties style through my love of rockabilly clubs and music. A pair of ballet pumps to dance in one week, a full skirt the next, and suddenly I was tracking down frocks at vintage fairs and rifling through shop rails for pencil skirts and lace blouses. Here, at last, was a fashion that suited my figure too - I'm five-foot-nothing and euphemistically an hourglass-shape; Kate Moss I'm not and skinny jeans make my legs look like parsnips. But give me a high-waisted skirt and I feel a hundred times more, well, feminine.

It's the rock'n'roll side of Fifties fashion I am drawn to most. The New Look, which in 1947 turned a world of women from boxy jackets and 40s deprivation onto yards of tulle and white gloves, is a little too staid and impractical for 21st-century girls who need to work and catch buses. Plus I am far too clumsy to cope with fragile Lucite handbags and delicate pin-tucks every day, and I save the hair-rolling for special occasions.

I prefer the sassier style of the rocking gals who tied their shirts round their waists, wore rolled-up jeans and Winehouse-style eyeliner.

I'd have to say my style icon of the era would be, perhaps predictably, pin-up queen Bettie Page. I love her flat, black "bangs", fitted wiggle dresses and leopard print obsession.

My favourite item of clothing, a vintage blue-flowered frock, is far more traditional though. The gathered skirt and scoop back feel so much more flattering than anything modern and stretchy, and unlike a cheap Primark number, some far-flung factory worker hasn't suffered to get it to me for £6. The passion and care of whoever made it is evident in every tiny stitch and carefully placed pleat and gather. Plus I was able to wear it to my dad's wedding two summers ago in the knowledge that no-one would have the same dress on.

Katie is the editor of www.fat-quarter.co.uk