Defined by fashion historian Valerie Steele as “a particular kind of clothing that is ‘in style’ at a given time,” fashion changed radically from the 1940s through the 1960s. These changes reflected the rise in youth culture, with its freedom of expression, and ultimately became one way in which people dealt with what felt like a swiftly changing world.
Fashion of the early to mid-1940s was dictated by World War II rationing, which restricted such things as buttons, pleats, type of cloth, amount of fabric, lengths, widths, pockets, zippers, and the height of heels. Therefore, most styles for men and women were utilitarian, practical, and modeled after military uniforms. New styles for women, such as pants and shorter hair, also rose in popularity and acceptability as women went to work in wartime factories. In spite of the necessities of practicality, designers were determined that the war would not dampen their creativity. In England, for example, designers banded together and created the “Utility Collection,” and the two-piece bathing suit was born thanks to fabric rationing; it later morphed into the more controversial bikini, which was introduced in 1946 and named after Bikini Atoll, an island where the United States tested nuclear weapons.
The United States briefly gained status as the center of the fashion world after the Paris fashion houses became inaccessible when the Germans captured France in 1940. This allowed new prominence for many American designers, including Claire McCardell, who designed with comfortable fabrics such as jersey for a more casual and everyday style. While the United States lost its status as the world’s fashion center after the war, this era marked the beginning of a distinct “American Look,” consisting of interesting and comfortable casual fashions.
After World War II, European style once again influenced the clothing that Americans chose to wear. Paris took back its title as the fashion center in 1947 when Christian Dior introduced his Corolla Line, more popularly known as The New Look. The New Look appealed to women because it was ultra-feminine and glamorous; it provided women with an alternative form, different from the boxy and military-inspired styles of earlier in the decade. The New Look featured a tight bodice, a small corseted waist, and full, long skirts. After initially balking about the longer length and functionality of The New Look, women ultimately embraced its delicacy for an entire decade. Other styles popular for women during the 1950s included pencil skirts, sweater sets, Coco Chanel’s separates and suits, pedal pushers, and even dungarees (jeans).
It was not until Hubert de Givenchy’s Sack Dress was introduced in 1957 that The New Look’s popularity began to fade. The Sack Dress was simply a sack; it did not have a waist or any sort of remarkable form, but it paved the way for fashion of the early 1960s.
Initially 1960s fashion was not radically new. Seasonal changes were marked by altering fabric, color, texture, and palette. However, fashion radically changed as the children of the World War II generation became teenagers. Beginning in the 1950s through the 1960s, they demanded their own unique style. An all out “youth-quake” began in England as the youth of Britain created their own styles, and London became the center of teenage fashion. The miniskirt was the most famous of all the youth fashions. Its hemline rose throughout the decade to eight or nine inches above the knee. Mary Quant, a British designer and boutique owner, is credited with the invention of the miniskirt. Quant, like other designers, copied the fashions she saw British youth wearing and designed solely for a teenage clientele.
In Great Britain, the influential youth group known as the “mods” was obsessed with style and music and demanded bright colors, geometric patterns, and a well-tailored fit; this clothing was extremely showy and
American actress and singer Debbie Reynolds modeling a two-piece swimsuit (Getty Images)
Flamboyant. In the United States hippie style, although not mainstream, also informed fashion of the 1960s. Opposite of the “mods,” hippie style was free-flowing, natural, romantic, and colorful. Pants for women also became extremely popular, especially tight, hip-hugging bell bottoms and jeans.
While jeans had been worn as a work uniform by men since the 19th century and by women since the 1940s, their popularity began to grow among the youth of the 1950s. Attempting to assert their own style and independence, male and female teenagers wore dungarees as casual wear. Movies such as The Wild One and Rebel without a Cause helped increase the popularity of jeans, as did such notable figures as Marilyn Monroe and Princess Alexandra of England. Jeans were further established in the 1960s, and by the 1970s they were accepted by all ages, races, and genders. As fashion historian Elizabeth Ewing has said, jeans became “a way of life, universal, classless, irrespective of age or sex.”
These teenage street styles filtered into the mainstream and into the fashion houses. Men’s fashion, for example, changed dramatically in the 1960s. Decade after decade men’s fashion had stayed the same with slight changes in style, especially leisure wear. As costume designer Deirdre Clancy has written, “Men didn’t have fashion. . . they just had clothes.” In a transformation known as the “peacock revolution,” many men, influenced by teenage fashion, broke away from the three-piece suit and tie. Instead they wore tight jeans, brightly colored shirts, printed patterns, long hair, and even bows and lace.
Street styles were so influential that often when fashion houses attempted to dictate styles—as they did with the midi and maxi skirts in the late 1960s and early 1970s—they were met with such resistance that their fashions failed. Even Jacqueline Kennedy, an iconic leader in mainstream American fashion, chose as her exclusive costumer American designer Oleg Cassini instead of fashions from Paris. By the end of the 1960s there was no single style dictated by fashion designers. Instead, Americans adopted a large variety of looks, which set the stage for what fashion editors came to call the “schizophrenic seventies.”
Further reading: Daniel Delis Hill, As Seen in Vogue: A Century of American Fashion in Advertising (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2004); Valerie Steele, Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997).
—Andrea Gomez
Faubus, Orval (1910-1994) politician Orval Faubus served six consecutive terms as governor of Arkansas (1955-67), and gained the national spotlight for his controversial role in the 1957 standoff at Little Rock’s Central High School, in which he called on the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the school’s desegregation.
Orval Eugene Faubus was born January 7, 1910, the son of a poor farmer, in Greasy Creek, Arkansas, a small Ozark Mountain community. He worked at a variety of jobs as a young man, including two terms as Madison County Circuit Clerk. Faubus enlisted in the U. S. Army in 1942, and he was commissioned as an officer in Europe, where he served from 1942 to 1946.
Following his return from his World War II service, Faubus worked as Huntsville, Arkansas, postmaster, and in 1949, was appointed to the Arkansas State Highway Commission. He became state director of highways in 1952, and he served for two years. In 1954, Faubus made a bid for governor.
Faubus defeated incumbent Francis Cherry in the 1954 Arkansas Democratic primary. Faubus later defeated Republican Pratt Remmel in the November 1954 election. The politics of race and integration played a prominent role in the campaign, for in May of that same year, the Supreme
Court handed down the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, ruling public school racial segregation unconstitutional. Governor Cherry had made it clear that Arkansas would comply with the Supreme Court ruling. Likewise, in his campaign as challenger, Faubus had pledged that “the rights of all will be protected but that the problem of desegregation will be solved on the local level, with state authorities standing ready to assist in every way possible.” A southern populist and New Deal Democrat, Faubus began his first term as governor with a liberal gesture, appointing six black men to the state Democratic Committee. He soon found that he could not afford such goodwill. Political opponents forced him to alter his liberal course, accusing him during the 1956 reelection campaign of being “soft” on racial issues.
Beginning with the city of Charleston, a few public schools across the state of Arkansas gradually began to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling to end segregation “with all deliberate speed.” Opposition to integration, however, grew increasingly fierce. Faubus, campaigning for reelection in 1956, became vocal in his resistance to desegregation. In January 1956, he reported to the press that “85 percent of all the people” of Arkansas opposed desegregation, according to a statewide poll he had commissioned. Nonetheless, segregationist leaders rallied around former state senator James Johnson as a Democratic candidate for governor, accusing Faubus of taking a “do-nothing” stand on desegregation. In a July 1956 campaign speech, Faubus responded to the criticism, stating, “No school district will be forced to mix the races as long as I am governor of Arkansas.”
Faubus defeated Johnson for the Democratic nomination, and he was reelected governor in 1956. In the same election, voters approved three segregation measures on the ballot, including an act authorizing school districts to assign students to schools in ways that reflected opposition to integration, and the Act of Interposition, putting the state on record as being in opposition to “racial mixing” in schools. In March 1956, all eight members of the Arkansas congressional delegation signed the Southern Manieesto, pledging, along with other congressmen, to use “all lawful means” to resist and overturn the Brown decision.
Faubus actively resisted integration in his second term. Even as the Little Rock School Board prepared plans to integrate Central High School the following fall, he signed anti-integration legislation in February 1957 that included provisions allowing parents to refuse to send their children to desegregated schools and authorizing the use of state and local funds to pay for legal fees incurred in the anti-integration battle. Faubus antagonized the National Association eor the Advancement oe Colored People (NAACP) by signing into law a requirement for organizations such as the NAACP to disclose membership and financial information, which put members at risk of violent attacks from anti-integration whites.
The desegregation effort officially began on September 4, 1957, when nine black students attempted to enter Central High School. The students were turned away by members of the Arkansas National Guard, called in by Faubus on orders to stand guard in front of the school to avert violence. Two weeks later, Federal District Judge Ronald Davies ruled that Faubus had used the National Guard not to maintain law and order but to prevent integration. The governor removed the guardsmen, but when the nine black students again attempted to attend school on September 23, a mob of 1,000 anti-integration whites became so unruly that the police feared a loss of control and escorted the students out a back exit. Prompted by pleas from Little Rock mayor Woodrow Mann, President Dwight D. Eisenhower dispatched 1,000 members of the 101st Airborne Division to Central High, and he federalized the National Guard. Under the escort of army troops, the nine black students attended school, ending the standoff.
For the next several years, Faubus utilized everything in his power as governor to resist the integration process, going so far as to close all Little Rock public high schools in 1958. His efforts to slow the progress of desegregation won him reelection for four more terms. He ran for governor three more times during the 1970s and 1980s, but he was unsuccessful. Faubus continued to defend his anti-integration efforts until his death in 1994, at the age of 84.
In 1977 Little Rock Central High School, the center of Faubus’s resistance to racial desegregation, was added to the National Register of Historic Places. While still functioning as a secondary school, Central High School was designated a National Historic Landmark on May 20, 1982, and in 1998 Congress passed legislation establishing a historic site directly across the street. Administered through a partnership between the National Park Service, Little Rock Public Schools, the city of Little Rock, and others, the historic site featured a permanent exhibit on the 1957 desegregation crisis and plans were made for a museum honoring the Little Rock Nine to coincide with the city’s 50th anniversary commemorations.
Further reading: Irving J. Spitzberg, Racial Politics in Little Rock, 1954-1964 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987).
—Guy R. Temple
World History
