Lustre Creme Dream Girl (1948)

What is not to like about the above advertisement for Lustre Creme? I'm deeply, deeply in love with the Dream Girl's gold sequin gown, lilac corsage, to-beat-the-band costume necklace, and of course her shining, gorgeous red wave of a mane. Could that zebra print night club booth be any more 1948 night club? I can almost hear Xavier Cugat in the background of this ad. Could her date be any more on the sidelines? "Bill", though headlining the ad copy in seventy two point font at the middle of the page, is compositionally reduced to the sidelines, though his hair does (fittingly, for a hair care ad) look pretty good. Though he initially overlooks our russet headed heroine on account of her lustre-less hair, Bill definitely comes to his senses by the of the advertisement. How about this for a come on: "My heart stood still when he murmured: "Dream Girl, that gorgeous hair rates a bridal veil." And what a bridal veil! Bill, in his morning suit, gets some full-face screen time, but Dream Girl's perfect hair steals the show. Lustre Creme, the answer to your bachelor girl prayers!



If you search Life magazine on Google books, you can pull up dozens of these ads from 1948, promising the 18-34 women's demographic popularity, glamour, and even marriage with the continued use of Lustre Creme Shampoo. EVERY AD ends in a marriage or engagement. It's like the tacit promise of using this beauty aid is "curing" your single status. In addition to lovely hair in the finest technicolors of the decade, the Dream Girls boast gorgeous, inevitably elegant ensembles of evening gowns and enormous costume jewelry pieces... oh, anyone would want to be a Dream Girl!

I miss these over-the-top advertisements. I can remember in the 80s and early 90s still seeing highly developed, hypothetical stories of woe accompanying dishpan hands and hard tap water, but the advertising world seems to have moved more away from the maudlin in this, our twenty-first century. Another thing that always amazes me about vintage advertisement is the amount of WORDS. Someone had to write them, and someone had to think your average magazine flipper would pause mid-article and read them!





The above Dream Girl actually gets a name-- "Jeannie" works in the often glamorous field of music composition, but sadly suffers from glamour-free hair and the accompanying disinterest of her music partner, Fred. I'm glad someone told me how important hair is to snaring an unrequited love. Who knew? Night club singer friend Madge, with a near perfect upsweep and enviable evening gown, helps Jeannie get cosmetically up to speed with Lustre Creme (though I think she was doing a pretty good job camouflaging her hair with that elfin stocking cap like the one Stanwyck wears in The Lady Eve). Eh voilà! "Unsuspected loveliness gleamed forth in my hair!" intones Jeannie gravely, studying her transformation in the mirror. Isn't she the spitting image of Shirley Temple in The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer in that panel? I see stars where there aren't even stars. From the wedding panel: "It was mink and Lohengrin for me a few months later. Our new number clicked...and how!" Mink, I do understand, but I assumed Lohengrin was the name of some defunct department store-- turns out, it's the name of an opera. Those music lovers! Droppin' famous names! Still, you learn something every day.





This gal, the unfortunately nicknamed "Tangle-locks", despite her jaunty neck scarf and kelly green sweater, gets a bum rap due to her "stubbornly unruly" hair. "No wonder my favorite campus king never looked my way!" she sighs. Girlfriend Sally, however, introduces old Tangle to LC, and everything turns around at the senior dance! "That wonderful varsity man did look my way very intently...attracted by the shimmering beauty Lustre Creme shampoo revealed in my hair." They dance the last dance together, and then on graduation day, Mister Varsity proposes! Which prompts the Co-Ed Formerly Known as Tangle Locks to wax philosophically, "Marriage may not be made entirely by a shampoo. But Lustre Creme shampoo...did help me recapture my true hair beauty, and did help me attract and win my man." Preach it, sister. Also, lemme get that rhinestone hairclip. 'Kay, thanks.



"Cinderella had nothing on me in spending lonely man-less evenings," this ad begins. You had me at hello, anyone? "My hair was dull, rebellious. But my sister Mimi knew a special way to keep her lock gleaming, soft and glossy. So she won all the beaux, including my "one and only" Mr. Handsome!"

It ain't right! Mimi, you haircare hussy! Mimi, in a decidedly Miriam Hopkins-esque move, will not share her shampoo secret, so our Cinderella pries it out of her hairdresser. Spoiler alert: it's Lustre Creme shampoo. A few weeks after her one and only notices the change in her coiffure and falls madly in love with her? You guessed it. Look at her rhinestone collar and matched-to-dress-lipstick! Who wouldn't fall in love?



Last but not least:




HOW MUCH DO I LOVE THE TERM "BACHELOR GIRL"? So full of pep, zip, verve!

This Dream Girl starts out the ad mournfully listening to "that haunting melody with romantic words about a new shampoo. 'Dream Girl, beautiful Lustre-Creme girl...". Now, that's my kind of Top 40 hit! Brings a tear. "Would Lustre Creme really help? Would it turn Jim's casual friendship into something more?" What do you think?


I really think she's the most radiant bride of them all. And check out that bridesmaid at right. The bow on the hat! The roped pearls! Above all, the yellow! Like it, like it.

You can still buy Lustre Creme shampoo, or a reproduction of the defunct brand's formula, here.
Which Dream Girl is your favorite? Do you think any looked better before the miracle shampoo treatment? Do you have any swear-by, engagement getting, life changing hair care product allegiances? Do tell!



Next time, I'll show the CELEBRITY ads for this illustrious brand. Less interesting copy, but even MORE interesting photos. Til then!

Beehive Envy: Brigitte Bardot

 Brigitte Bardot, you little minx. HOW DO YOU GET YOUR HAIR TO LOOK LIKE THIS? Believe me, I've tried to throw myself out of bed, racoon-ring my eyes in liquid liner, and crazy pin my fauxhive into some semblance of devil may care nonchalance, but it never quite turns out like this. The photos above are what I had in mind when I thought, "Bedhead's good, right? Bedhead can be good, if you just-" (mouthful of bobby pins, scalp jabbing pinning motions) "And then it kinda..." (fanning top of hive with free hand, hairspraying it to bejesus) "There!", oggling my own reflection for possible improvements.... Only "there" was more like "Did you sleep there last night?" as opposed to "Now THERE'S the look I was going for!" Brigitte, what is your secret? 

 

 My hair inspirations, in chronological order-- Cher (high school, dead straight, center parted, near waist length), Zelda Fitzgerald (jawbone bobbed, geometric in the front and shaped in the back), Kim Novak (ill-fated experiment with white blonde hair), Jean Seberg (shorn boy short to regrow hair damaged in Novak phase), and Louise Brooks (just for fun, but it turns out flat ironing the thousand cowlicks my hair is heir to...not so much fun). That brings us up to two years ago, when, after a bad haircut too many I decided to just never, never cut my hair again. Not for split ends, not for a trim, not for love and money. From the Brooksie bob, my hair is JUST NOW elbow length. 

 Which brings us to our current state of "everyday I'm beehivin'". I love how easy the kind of hair I do IS to do. Procedural, as follows:

1. Brush hair into tight ponytail.
2. Pull ponytail through pony tail loop once more until ends of ponytail are alllllmost through but not quite.
3. Pin ends to nape of neck. Pin the half ponytail towards front of head.
4. Fan middle of ponytail into parabola shape. Tug at edges until arriving at desired shape.

Total elapsed time? 5 minutes; maybe more, maybe less. No more than ten. See an even better (and pink! [in keeping with our last pro-pink post]) faux hive tutorial based on the same principle at Kate Gabrielle's Scathing Brilliant blog. Great minds think alike! Still, what if I'm ready to take my hive to the next level? Padding out the pouf with hair rats? Carefully side sweeping flirty bangs? Will my cowlicks keep me from Bardot perfection? Do I need some kind of curling agent/iron to perfect the waviness of her tossed and tousled look? Also, all up or part way down? Examine:

I'm willing to put in the time if I get to look like an early sixties' siren. Do I lighten it or leave it, though? And let us not forget how Bardot uses ornamentation! I've taken to sticking velvet bowties in my hair on the occasional lark, but see how well she uses a velvet ribbon tied in a bow to various effect.

I'm telling you, she's almost got me convinced it's worth the trouble.

Who's YOUR hairstyle icon? Any tips on how to achieve the four B's (Brigitte Bardot Beehive and Bangs)?

Enjoy a singing, beautifully coiffed, though B & W video of our lady of flawless hair below. Isn't she even more gorgeous on film? She has those dark silent film eyes that just glitter.

Think Pink! (1955)

The Peak Year for Pink! 1955! This article says it, and I believe it. In the above two page photo spread shot by Gordon Parks (yes, THAT Gordon Parks), Life magazines implores the male amongst its legions of midcentury readers to take the pink flag and run with it. Though Brooks Brothers had been manufacturing rosy hued shirts 'n sleeves since the turn of the century, 1955 saw the color at the height of its manly popularity. Sports coats! Ties! Irreverent saddle shoes! I can't say that I don't cast a wistful eye on the dandy pink that seems to have resurfaced and just as quickly died down in this, our twenty-first century. Why can't more of us, simply, and in a lasting fashion, Think Pink?

I may be a liberated, modern woman, but I'm not going to lie to you-- I love pink. L-o-v-e pink.

Specifically, like a lot of you mid century maniacs out there, I'm a sucker for any kind of knickknack in that pale, pastel pink of the early to mid 1950's. I first read about the provenance of this cultural fad in Karal Ann Marling's indispensible text As Seen on Tv: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950's-- the very first chapter, entitled "Mamie's New Look", goes in depth into First Lady Eisenhower's passion for pink and its overspill into the America her husband helped shape. Take a look, for example, at her crucial choice of inaugural gown:



Get it, Mamie! Though fifty-seven at the time of DWE's 1953 swearing-in, ME's poodle-cut, and wouldn't-Barbie-herself-be-jealous pink princess gown belied a much more "youthful" attitude towards dress and personal appearance. Inagural gowns are kind of a big deal-- an exhibit just opened in November at the Smithsonian featuring a number of them, and I'll have to say, Mamie's is among the twentieth century's best. A far less Pepto color in real life than the painting would have you believe, hers is one of the only gowns showing more than a clavicle or a wrist's worth of skin. Even Jackie Kennedy's dress, of whom you would expect haute couture fireworks, is a little safe. This number though? Sheer "I Don't Care, This is How I Want You To Think of Me". What a way to introduce yourself to the nation! I'd wear it. See the Smithsonian's take on it HERE.

I grew up in the late 80's and early nineties, in which pink-for-girls had taken a turn for the worse in the form of a fuschia tone, à la mode de my beloved childhood role model, Jem:

Who, I'm not going to lie to you, looks totally awesome in the above ensemble. As do her rock and roll friends. I didn't remember ANY of her band until I googled the above results, which teaches you the same hard lesson the members of the Bangles who were NOT Susanna Hoffs, or members of Culture Club who were NOT Boy George, no doubt had to learn the hard way... if you're going to be in a band, you should probably be the lead singer. See, even the redhead on the left with the KEYTAR didn't warrant a little five second memory in my four year old brain. But I digress.

THIS kind of pink-- a full-on fuchsia-- reminds me of the roots of my 80's color pink aversion, which I've almost overcome in my adult years (almost!). In a rare and never to be repeated act of good faith on my parents' part, in 1989, I was allowed to choose the color my room would be painted. I was four, so naturally, I chose the sickmaking Jem pink of the above photo... a pink no surface larger than a foot square should probably be painted. I don't know if I could live with a DESK that color, much less an entire room.

What makes it worse? Up until this point, the room, which now functioned as a bedroom but had earlier been a den/office space, had remained the original, knotty pine panelled wood of many fifties' construction den/office space-ish rooms. My mom hated the look of the plain wood and had already painted the knotty-pine kitchen cabinets a clean white...my dad, who liked the vintage look but was loath to argue, set about the business of painting over the hardwood with two gallons of vom-bomb fuchsia. After a week of pink-overdose induced eyestrain and much handwringing as to the trouble and expense, my dad was forced to paint the whole room AGAIN, this time a more soothing blue it was to remain for the rest of our time in the house. When I moved back in, I painted the room a candy apple green, which is nice, but... I can't help but be a little wistful for the knotty pine we left behind.

(Above: The actual color, and the actual image I had of what I was going to look like when I grow up. Uh, still the image of what I want to look like when I grow up? Or what I want to look like this weekend, for example?)

With such pink-induced trauma at an early age, I nevertheless never had a cause to reject the pale pink of Eisenhower-era America. So many girls, gals, ladies, women and (my least favorite word) females disavow themselves of pink ties because of the supposed "disempowerment" of wearing a culturally gender specific color. For example, I read a whole book on midcentury pink and femininity by Lynn Peril (sounds a bit like a front woman from a Jem-esque band, no?) called Pink Think. Great subject, great title...and great disappointment. While her scholarship was top-notch, I couldn't help being crest-fallen at her categorical riot grrl rejection of traditional 1950's female role and values taught to young girls [insert sly witticism about "rose colored glasses" here]. Sure, a lot of the copy in home ec texts, ladies' magazines, advertisements, and romantic-fiction-written-by-men was patronizing to women, and some downright insulting, but a lot was a case of "you could read it like this, or you could read it like that". And me, even with my deep longing for structure and etiquette, pining e're so unrealistically for an Eisenhower America that may or may not have ever even existed, even I can look at something and see both sides of the argument ("Ok, that waaaaas a little women bashing. But still!"). Miss Peril (Lord, I covet her name) refuses to in her book. And that's a bummer.

Down with pink hate! Up with pink acceptance!

In the spirit of my new pet cause, I would welcome any and all of the items below into my home:

Lemme get that pink grill for Bab to grill out, in his pink workshirt and tie from the first magazine spread! Baroque hat rack? Check! Pink and black striped guest towels to match my pink and black tiled bathroom? CHECK CHECK. Just dip everything in that dusty moonlit hue of pale pink and I'm for sure to buy it. FOR SURE! If just in a show of sentimental solidarity. Also, to benefit the kitsch quotient of the house (always looking out for the bottom line).

Here are some other pink supporters I found while looking around for evidence:

Joan Collins takes it to the next level by posing with a pink poodle. This is an alternate shot to the one I used in my Slim Aarons post a million moons ago,and I think the scene is positively MORE pink than the other photograph I saw. As many times as I've seen pink poodles in iconography, be it a skirt or a lamp base or a chalkware wall hanging, it's somehow still disturbing even as a pink supporter to see a living little poodle dyed and fluffed to the color and consistency of cotton candy! Check out this photo of Zsa Zsa Gabor and a poodle, the latter of which is suffering not only the indignity of pink-hued tresses, but also false eyelashes! Doesn't that just beat all?

The thing about looking up photos of Elvis and the famous pink Cadillac he bought for his mother? Most of the photos taken were in black and white. DIS.A.PPOINTING. However, I did find these:

I love early Elvis snaps for the same sense of insistent style I noticed in Mamie's inagural dress selection. He's looking at the camera like "THIS. This, FINALLY, is exactly what I want to look like". Tony Curtis pompadour, slim as a bone, five feet ten of dress slacks and attitude. Catch a glimpse of those pink socks he obviously had the intention of showing off in that he kicked his foot up on the bumper for that purpose. He's got the look!

An exquisitely young Shirley MacLaine, as pink as you can get! This is from a 1964 picture called What a Way to Go, but how could I resist?



As to houses, Jayne Mansfield (all-around fifties' sex bomb, my dearly loved Mariska from Law and Order:SVU's mom) was famous for her pink mansion, the pool of which she once filled with pink champagne for a publicity stunt. A paen to pink, this place. However, the shagged out walls of her pink bathroom do make me a little antsy:

Can you imagine trying to sell this house?

Modern day champion of pink, Betsey Johnson, does HER pink house up in the right way:

Ugh! I'm disgusted at how cool this is.

Anyway, I'm running out of my usual supply of zealous steam... what's your thought on the "pink" issue? Do you seek it out/avoid it/not really care one way or the other?

(PS How could I resist? From Funny Face:)

Til next time!

The Clothes Off My Back (10)

Good morning! Time for another "Look! Clothes!" post? I think so.

The estate sale season seems to be winding down for the dreaded winter doldrums, so I've been mining the local Goodwills like it was a paying job (would that it WERE a paying job), and as usual the typical joints did NOT disappoint. I'm on my way out to make a sweep of three in a row after work before the half-off-first-Saturday of the month sale has its inventory-decimating effect, so maybe, just maybe! I'll have more to report about in the not so distant future. But for now, onto the outfits of maybe-a-month-but-not-so-long-ago!



This shirt, a Mossimo Target number (aren't they all?), was marked with the right color tag for the 99 cent rack, and I bought it with hesitation because it's been a looong time since I bought a button up shirt. But here we are! And has it grown on me. I love the fingerprint/amoeba pattern and the colors are very mohd-drennnn, if you will. What I really love about this outfit, though, is the Louis Vuitton looking bag I got at the outlet Goodwill! Meaning I think it cost me all of a dollar and a half. First, understand the bizzare-o world retail space of the outlet--there are these huge, six foot long by six foot wide rolling tupperware-y tubs with items just tossed in, vaguely categorized ("housewares, bags, clothes, books" seems to be the rough sort-by-type), and being manhandled, thrown, and dug through by a constantly changing but never decreasing in number cast of shoppers. A woman with a shopping basket full of six or seven purses put this one and another sixties', woven basket style purse back in one of the containers before she went to the cashier's station, and I, of course, snapped it up. See the hugely oversized dimensions compared to the purses I usually carry! And the sweet curves to the shape of the purse! How could I pass it up?

Now, when I got the purse, all the fixtures on the outside were a dull grey, too-worn out painted-leather, which gave the whole thing a gross, early 80's, overused look. The handle had no covering on it at all, but was stripped to the forming-wire. I thought about spraypainting the leather parts, but this would be tricky as there were the gold studs I wanted to stay gold, and a LOT of wicker to masking tape. And what was I going to do with the handle? While I pondered different ways of blocking it out, I came across some black electrical tape, and was struck by a felicitous solution. Cutting strips and carefully tacking the tape under the studs with a butter knife, I covered all the leather hardware AND the handle with the electric tape, and VOILÀ. The black makes a great contrast with the wicker, plus the electrical tape makes it look more faux leather than if I painstakingly spray painted it. I love it when a plan comes together! I now carry this purse pretty much every day and feel very much like Jane Birkin. A happy ending if ever I heard one.



This was another fall day outfit... I've shied away wearing black on black lately unless I can pep it up with some key color to offset all the black, and in this case, it was gold. Gold peeptoe flats, hubcap sized gold Sarah Coventry pinwheel earrings, and the kingfish pin make me feel more cosmopolitan gal than bereaved loved one. One neat thing about the earrings? If the wind blows towards you while wearing them, you can hear a weird, whistly, weathervane kind of noise, right in your ear. These are also dangerous for hugs, because the points of the pinwheel are supersharp for some reason. I think I seem standoffish sometimes when hugging people and wearing these, when really I only fear for their safety!



At left: seventies' patterned button up shirts and blouses were once the very core of my high school and college wardrobe... I was forever in blue jeans and the Salvation Army, cursing the fact that this or that vintage Diet Rite ad colors shirt was eight times too large for my slight upper body (and, infuriatingly enough, this or that pastel Jackie O suit's skirt was two times too small for my pear shaped lower body. It was like my figure was created not to fit into fitted vintage clothes). However! I did hit upon a number of frill necked, shoulder grazing collar tipped, blindingly patterned polyester pretties in the correct size, and that was really my "thing" in the late 90's and early 2000's. While cleaning out the attic, I found an entire trunk of clothes that I don't think had been opened since college, and in it, this top, one of my MOST FAVORITE from the good old days of fitted shirt wearing. It always reminded me of Dinah Shore in a pant suit or some similar mid 70's tv appearance appropriate outfit. This shirt was always solo with a black skirt or jeans or pants-- minimalist, if such a term can be applied to 70's patterns. That is, UNTIL I found the skirt, which is part of a three piece mod-collared jacket, sleeveless blouse, and skirt ensemble I followed a man (??) around Hendersonville Goodwill for twenty minutes to acquire. The color just SANG to me from across the room, and eventually, after much sturm and drang, including said man asking an employee about the set, looking again and again at the separate pieces, and his eventually replacing it on the rack, I snagged it. Maybe the $12.99 price tag (I hate how knit-sets and suits are all priced the same, more than $7.99 price) scared him off. Incidentally, have you noticed a lot of my best finds involve items snatched from the brink of someone else's cart? Anyway, note that the skirt is the EXACT OUTRAGEOUS ORANGE of the shirt's orange pattern. Kismet! I wore this to double Thanksgiving at my mom's house and Bab's brother's house in Murfreesboro. Probably my new favorite outfit.

At right, the same outfit I wore to the Psychedelic Furs concert at the Cannery Ballroom earlier in the year, recycled for a workday that necessitated "self-esteem boosting dress up". Not that I don't usually don the dog to go to work, but I felt like wearing something particularly pretty after a haggard day or two in forced spectacles-wearing (ugh! Why are my super-high prescription glasses so disfiguring?! You'll never see a photo of me in them on this blog for that reason). You can't see here but the skirt is a full circle, draped in a way that swishes as you walk (Goodwill, $7.99). Also, that cardigan is my new favorite summer-to-winter-wear conversion piece (the short sleeved one from earlier is still cute, but not slimming nor warm enough for my taste. Le sigh).

Last but not least, the holiday season is upon us!

As we trundled down out of the attic swathed in red and gold garlands, Matthew took a moment to rememberthe true meaning of Christmas. Which is getting to hug a pink aluminum Christmas tree out of sheer joie de Noël. Or... joie de kitsch. At any rate, we're excited to get to decorate again! Have you guys put up your decorations yet?

Til next time!