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

My so called second-hand life

Second-hand shopping has claimed more column inches since we fell into recession, but while the impetus for the growth in popularity of charity shops, boot-ique sales, and vintage fairs may have come from necessity, such outlets have flourished thanks to the increasing number of people searching for the unique in a consumer market saturated by fast-fashion and mass-produced style statements.

Not only is second-hand shopping often cheaper than the high-street, the experience can be constructed as a sport. Where it may be easy to find stylish home accessories in Habitat, for example, it takes a more tuned eye to spot the gems in a car boot sale, or down the local Oxfam store.

Our increased inclination to peer fondly backwards rather than strain forwards – this season’s top fashion trends; body-con dresses, statement shoulders and leggings all made their catwalk debut in the 1980s; and Cath Kidston’s 1950’s-housewife-inspired prints have found appeal well beyond the yummy mummy market – has also helped propel second-hand shopping into the mainstream.

Fashion seems to have become self-referential to the point where we have come full-circle – when wondering which defining trends from the noughties will make it onto the moodboards of future designers; you have to ask which trends from the noughties didn’t borrow from eras past. Thus it’s only natural for full-skirted 1950s dresses and kitsch homewares to have become more fashion-forward than fuddy-duddy.

To me, second-hand shopping is a discipline, in which to excel I have to put in the hours, but from which the reward - the buzz of finding that unique item to help create my individual style - becomes slightly addictive. And if said item originates from my favourite decades in style – the 1960s and 70s – all the better.

A few of my favourite vintage finds from around my home:


Bought for £3.50 from a Brighton flea market.


Dressing table, bought for £40 from Gumtree. Vintage bags £3 and £4 from a charity shop.


Coffee cups and saucers, bought from a flea market in Amsterdam - 10 Euros for the set. Flask £1.50 chairty shop. Clock £5 Ebay.


Metal tea pot bought from a charity shop for £2.50. Cup and saucers part of the above set.


JH Lynch print, bought from an street market in Amsterdam for 7 Euros.


Old knitting magazine cover, bought from a Brighton flea market for £1.50 and framed.


Bought from a charity shop for £1.


Bought from a charity shop for £1.