Well, have I got a treat for you all this Photo Friday! Oddly enough, I was trying to find photos of vintage dads for a change when I found this photostream, and was so struck by the photos of the user's mother, decade after decade, that I decided to use her instead! Folks, take a look:
The first photo is from senior prom 1957, and what a winner of a picture she took for the occasion! Mom is decked out here in a satin-bodiced dress with built-in capelet that seems to terminate at the lap in a cascade of tulle. Oh! I wonder what it looked like full length! And what color, too. I particularly like the filled-in eyebrows and the choker of this ensemble. I bet she was the belle of the ball that night at her high school Hedgesville, West Virginia!
The next photo is on her wedding day to a man identified as her first husband. Doesn't he have a Ken doll like smoothness to his face? I guess this comes from being an eighteen year old groom in 1957. Notice that the mom still has her hair in that co-ed cutie curled bob of the prom photo (which was only a few months earlier, I guess!). I tried on quite a few of these style wedding dresses at Goodwill over the years (back when they actually had them), but always had trouble inching my 1985-model body into a 1958-model dress. Not to mention the brittle, fragile nature of a lot of the lace! I might need to have my skeleton removed to fit into something like this, but gosh, couldn't I just die of envy looking at old photos of brides in them!
Here are the newlyweds a little while later, with Mr. Ken looking no less plastic, if a little hirsute in the eyebrow department. See his midcentury tie! Mom has added more bangs to her haircut, but is still pretty much rockin the 1957 look, clean faced but for the defined eyebrows.
In 1958, she has turned over a new leaf! The curls have been combed out to more of a poodle cut, but still very cute! I am noticing and loving the printed band that makes a line of demarcation between her trim, collared blouse and her shorts? Pants? Culottes? We have no way of telling.
Jarringly, the next picture on the timeline comes from Olan Mills in the mid sixties'. I love her hair (LOVE her hair), but Mom has gone a little more aggressive with the eyebrow pencil. I bet in color, this looked less stark than it does in sepia tone, however. Women of the sixties', how do I get my hair to do this? Can it be done with longer lengths? Where is my Warren Beatty in Shampoo like hairstylist when I need him?
Now this, maybe a year or two later but in exactly the same style portrait, is even better! I really like her hair (REALLY REALLY like her hair), those button-y earrings, and her heavily eyelinered/possibly false eyelashed eyes. Even the dark brows look good when combined with the dark eyemakeup.
The final transformation! I might be wrong for this, but I LOVE everything in this picture. The pale lipstick, the sky high hair, the black ruffled voile dress...I would wear everything but the corsage just as is, to accept my award at the 1970 CMA awards ceremony (in all my high hair fantasies, I am a country music singer in the style of my beloved Tammy Wynette). I'm of the opinion that some of that is her hair, and some of that is added volume from a hair rat or some other coiffure-based jerry rigging. What do you think?
So! Have you seen your stylish relatives run the fashion gamut, decade by decade, in your family albums? None of my relatives were really ever very edgy! Which makes for much less interesting "over the years" photos. Can you teach me how to make my hair do any of these tricks? Let's talk!
That's all for today, I'm off to try and nail down a few more of these wedding details. Keep a good thought for me, and I'll see you on Monday! Til then.
great find!
ReplyDeletefor this coiffs you need fine, not to long hair. nothing what you and i have from mother nature.....
first you have to curl the hair on rollers and then teaseteasetease and SPRAY IT. and of cause you need a rat. or 2, 3......
My mom's got a great style evolution going on in old pics, but the best (read 'funny' and 'embarrassing') photos are a couple of her school photos from the late '50s/early '60s. My mother loves to tell the story: "I learned pretty quickly not to tell my mother that we were having school pictures taken because she would inevitably give me a perm the night before. I looked like an electrocuted poodle in a couple of school photos before I learned that lesson." And she really DOES look like a poodle that stuck it's paw in a light socket in those pics! Hilarity!...for anyone else viewing them anyway...she's still understandably mortified by them!
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