1950s Men’s Fashion – Timeless Mid Century Style

There’s a key second in The Wild One, the 1953 youth-ploitation film by which an outlaw biker gang runs rampant by way of Hicksville USA, when a starstruck woman inquires of their ringleader, an impeccably leather-jacketed, cuff-jeaned, scuff-booted, Fifties males’s trend icon Marlon Brando, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling in opposition to?”

Brando’s response, with a world-weary sigh: “What’ve you bought?”

The quick reply, at the very least in sartorial phrases, was: quite a bit. The early years of the last decade have been a method desert, a buttoned-up hangover of inflexible post-war conformity by which even the maddest of males have been trapped in grey-suit lockdown; however an important loosening-up had begun to happen by the point Brando roared into city.

Rock ‘n’ roll music, Beat poetry, and the summary expressionists have been main the countercultural cost, and fashion took its cue from their let-it-all-hang-out ethos; cuts turned looser, collars misplaced their starch, and parts of sportswear, workwear, and army uniform started to search out their approach into the on a regular basis wardrobe.

What Is Fifties Males’s Style?

This was a time when a few of at the moment’s model staples – the turtleneck, the denim jacket , the knitted polo – have been beginning to come into their very own, worn with an air of studied nonchalance, if not a sneer on the be-hatted company drones. However maybe nothing symbolised the brand new, rebel-yell period extra potently than the elevation of the standard white T-shirt.

Previously a military-issue undergarment, it was immediately draped throughout the last decade’s most iconic chests; Brando bought sweaty in a single in 1951’s A Streetcar Named Want, whereas James Dean brooded in a single in Insurgent With out A Trigger (1955). Even Arthur Miller was pictured in a single at his writing desk. “It turned a type of visible shorthand for rebel,” says G. Bruce Boyer, trend historian and writer of True Fashion: The Historical past and Ideas of Traditional Menswear, who was himself a young person within the Fifties. “It represented the appropriation of blue-collar clothes for individuals who refused to purchase into company society.”

In the meantime, rockers like Elvis Presley left extra formal gown codes, effectively, all shook up, changing trilbies with slick quiffs, ties with button-down shirts, and fusty flannels with featherweight fleck-linen jackets. Jack Kerouac and the Beats made a fetish of utilitarian workwear, each of their lives – of their plaid shirts and beat-up blouson jackets – and of their literature: “His soiled work garments clung to him so gracefully, as if you couldn’t purchase a greater match from a customized tailor however solely earn it from the Pure Tailor of Pure Pleasure,” writes Kerouac of Dean Moriarty (impressed by real-life Beat hipster Neal Cassady) in 1957’s On The Street.

Main the pack of unruly artists, Jackson Pollock sported splattered denim overalls when creating his epoch-making drip work: “A whole lot of artists within the Thirties and Nineteen Forties dressed like accountants,” says Boyer. “Jackson and his friends needed to seem like the antithesis of that.” Of their decisive break with sartorial custom, the Fifties rebels discovered their final – and most enduring – trigger. “They broke the mould,” says Boyer. “And we’re persevering with to dwell with their legacy.”

What Does Fifties Males’s Style Imply In the present day?

“I needed to attempt to push some freedom into the lads’s collections,” Miuccia Prada has mentioned, “and the most effective methods I discovered of doing that was to reference a time – the Fifties – when males first discovered the liberty to specific themselves with their garments.”

Whereas many manufacturers have rebooted the traditional Fifties males’s trend – high-waisted trousers, Perfecto leather jackets, Cuban-collar shirts , penny loafers – Prada have carried out greater than most to maintain the religion whereas including a contemporary twist; witness their current collaboration with Mr Porter that consisted of striped bowling shirts, checked Harrington jackets, graphic knitted polos, suede blousons, and loafers in Prada’s personal Spazzolato leather-based. “The Fifties was a time of celebration and optimism,” mentioned Mr Porter purchaser Daniel Todd, “and the gathering displays that.”

Prada x Mr Porter

Fifties males’s types are additionally more and more related at a time when conventional dress codes have damaged down, and a well-placed knitted polo, textured sport coat, or pair of pleated trousers will add an air of breezy insouciance and smart-casual confidence to a work-or-play outfit.

“We’re at an identical level to the Fifties themselves, in some methods,” says the tailor and designer Timothy Everest . “Separates have largely changed fits in most places of work, so folks want to search out alternative ways to face out. A whole lot of the shapes and patterns which can be key to that – from the wider-leg trouser to the fine-checked blouson jacket – got here to prominence in that decade.”

Reiss

And different fashionable designers other than Mrs Prada – Lucas Ossendrijver at Lanvin, Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino – have put their very own spin on a few of these appears, from printed satin bomber jackets to palm tree-print shirts. “The ‘50s types laid down the marker for contemporary menswear,” Ossendrijver tells FashionBeans. “They are often reinvented repeatedly.”

However there’s another excuse why Fifties males’s trend is imperishable; greater than half a century after Marlon Brando roared his approach into cinematic historical past, they nonetheless carry a whiff of the subversive and the ineffably cool. From Cliff Richard’s urging us to move-it-and-a-groove-it in a drape jacket in 1958 (sure, he was a hepcat as soon as) to a bequiffed Alex Turner donning a Saint Laurent varsity jacket within the 2010s, this specific revolt into model reveals no signal of burning out.

As a up to date difficulty of Life journal declared, of the newly-minted species of teenager: “They dwell in a jolly world of gangs, video games, movies , and music. They converse a curious lingo, adore chocolate milkshakes, put on moccasins in every single place, and drive like bats out of hell.” Be sincere – sixty years on, who wouldn’t wish to channel at the very least a bit of little bit of that?

Fifties Mens Lookbook

Key Fifties Males’s Clothes

These are the important thing Fifties males’s trend items that outline the period and proceed to encourage model at the moment.

1. Cuban Collar Shirt

Nothing says ‘Havana blast’ greater than this breezy summer time, males’s informal staple, which might hint its historical past again to the 18th century in South America, the place it was a type of working-class uniform, although it actually made a striped, checkered, and Polynesian-print splash within the Fifties, the place it was seen on the again of everybody from Elvis to Montgomery Clift.

With its notch lapel-like collar (often known as a camp or revere collar), quick sleeves, and straight, boxy hem, you might consider it as a classier tackle the Hawaiian shirt. The fashionable variant has a extra fitted minimize and tapered sleeves; put on beneath a blazer for an off-duty Don Draper impact or roll the sleeves for the complete Gene Vincent look. Reiss has a reasonably wide selection, each plain and printed, or strive Timothy Everest’s bold-checked or white-weaved variations.

2. Pleated Trousers

Those that would see the Fifties trend as a bastion of flat-front uniformity within the trouser division didn’t reckon with the hepcats or the rockabillies, who have been saying “pleats please” many years earlier than Issey Miyake bought in on the act. “The early rockers borrowed closely from the zoot fits that the jazz musicians of the Nineteen Forties wore,” says G. Bruce Boyer. “It was a vibrant, exaggerated tackle tailoring.”

Pleated trousers create elegant traces and a full silhouette (although any maxi-pleated ‘80s-style take needs to be averted, until you’re heading to a Child Creole & The Coconuts-themed costume social gathering), work equally effectively in a proper or informal context, and have the added summertime good thing about permitting air to flow into across the pins. E.Tautz has many variations on provide – the beige cotton chinos are significantly mid-century stylish – whereas Kent & Curwen’s are available utilitarian tan.

3. Fifties Males’s Sneakers: Penny Loafers

The traditional slip-on footwear (the ‘moccasins’ referred to in Life’s breathless anatomisation of {the teenager}) has a chequered historical past – Norwegian fishermen and small-denomination cash consider at varied factors – however, for our functions, it’s sufficient to know that these footwear turned the traditional of entirety for the Ivy League preppy look that blossomed within the Fifties, and that they’ve been gracing the toes of each well-dressed man since, from Paul Newman – who stays the one man to pair them with white socks and nonetheless look cool – to Tinie Tempah.

If you wish to go full prep, workforce an unique pair of Bass Weejuns with khakis, navy blazer, Oxford button-down shirt, and knit tie (no socks, natch) and keep away from the ‘enhancements’ that varied designers have felt moved so as to add within the ensuing many years – zebra print, baroque tassels, Cuban heels, backless iterations with fun-fur trim and so forth.

4. Knitted Polo

The unique polo shirt, pioneered by Rene Lacoste, was designed within the ‘20s as a breezy different to the closely starched, long-sleeved whites that tennis gamers had hitherto laboured in; the knit polo, developed within the Fifties in fine-knit cottons and cashmeres, was a breezy different to the shirt, with patterned variations conferring pizzazz and Riviera-readiness on their wearers.

For affirmation, try Dickie Greenleaf, as performed by Jude Legislation in The Proficient Mr. Ripley, all stripe-panel polos, cuffed shorts, and suede loafers , an object lesson in dressing with corniche-owning, bebop aptitude. Trendy-day Dickies can sip their soiled proseccos in retro-futurist variations by the likes of Scott Fraser Assortment (sky blue L-stripe), Subsequent (textured with contrasting white) and Uniqlo (plain emerald inexperienced).

5. Blouson Jacket & Sport Coats

The place to start out with the blouson? Beginning out because the Harrington jacket, the sporty, waist-length, zippered, tartan-lined, elastic-cuffed mainstay was initially produced as one of the crucial light-weight rainproof {golfing} sport coats within the UK within the Thirties (the liner got here courtesy of Lord Lovat, a British commando and eager putter who gave permission for his clan verify for use), however actually took off after its export to the US within the Fifties, dovetailing with the development for flight and bomber jackets worn by pilots throughout World Warfare II and the Korean Warfare.

It was taken up by the last decade’s Holy Trinity of fashion – Elvis, Dean, Steve McQueen – and has since been adopted by subcultures from mods to soul boys and Britpop legends (take a light-weight bow, Damon Albarn and Liam Gallagher). You may do rather a lot worse than investing in an unique Baracuta G9, however Prada’s satin quantity is a bit more Drive, although at an investment-piece worth.

6. Leather-based Jacket

Nothing screams Fifties males’s trend icons like Marlon Brando driving a motorbike, sporting a pointy leather-based jacket in The Wild One, or Fonzie in his iconic leather-based jacket in Blissful Days. Even Grease was set in 1958 and everyone knows how a lot these guys cherished their leather-based. Within the Fifties and ensuing many years, leather-based jackets have been a staple in males’s wardrobes as a reliable, simple to succeed in for possibility with a foul boy aptitude.

Leather-based jackets are simply a type of Fifties mens trend items that can by no means going out of fashion, most likely as a result of they’re the proper companion for denims to high off a cool look. When purchasing to your personal, spend money on high quality leather-based that can final you for a few years to come back, and gained’t fall aside from all these bikes you’ll be driving.

7. Fedora Hat

The standard fedora reached nice heights in Fifties males’s trend, and was the preferred hat on the time, principally because of Frank Sinatra. Nicely beloved in 50s cinema and by modern younger males of the last decade, the fedora remains to be a timeless piece for any man’s wardrobe.

Including an old style twist to any outfit, fedoras aren’t simply to your dad’s mates. They’re modern and trendy, with an air of secrecy. In the present day, many males don stingy brim fedoras with a brim that’s lower than two inches. However for a fair larger impact, check out a beneficiant, or broad brim fedora for an enduring impression.