1950s Pencil Dress & Skirt

Video Transcript

"The second popular silhouette of the fifty's, which was more popular in the later part of the decade is similar to what I am wearing now. It was called the pencil silhouette. This is a pencil skirt, it goes around the hips and in towards the bottom and the top would be form fitting and emphasize the waist. And this was sort of a modified hour glass. Instead of going out at the waist and out at the shoulders it was more streamlined but still emphasized the waist and indicated a really womanly figure. It's really important also to remember that under any of these styles, women would be wearing girdles, which sort of pushed you in in the middle and created an hour glass shape. So you can see this clothing is very tight as was the dior new look that I showed you before and it was really, really, really important to have the waist. If you didn't naturally have a figure that had a waist, you needed to create one. Another example of the pencil skirt and this one actually is from the fifties, is this right here. You can see how small the waist is up here. This is approximately twenty three inch waist, which is tiny. And it makes room, you can see it makes room for the hip how it goes out and then comes back in. This is also in a really nice color, which is something we haven't talked about yet. The fifties use of color was really important but it was generally limited to one piece in an outfit. You'll also notice the length of it, the one I'm wearing is actually a little bit shorter then it would have been in the fifties. But this one would go below the knees as would the higher ones and the new look skirts. Because you still want it to be a lady but you can see that we are moving towards a more formed fitting style."