1950's Fashion | Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire

Movie still

By: Warner Brothers

Date: 1951

Source: Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. Movie still. 1951. The Kobal Collection/Warner Bros. Image number STR001BM.

Introduction

Youth fashion in the 1950s can be described entirely with the word "commercial." Designers marketed and sold heavily to teens, who for the first time had large amounts of disposable income to spend. Moreover, teens were influenced in their clothing choices by movies, television, and rock stars. They strove to imitate their heroes and each other. In so doing, they conformed to social expectations in a way that was not entirely unlike the overall conformity of the adult world in the 1950s, though many of them claimed to be rebelling against their parents' stilted values.

Most adolescent girls chose between the poodle skirt and the greaser looks. The poodle skirt crowd wore calf-length...