50's Fads&Fashions

Fifties Fads and Fashions

There were many cool styles in fifties clothing. One of the popular styles were the Poodle Shirts! Along with the skirts, they usually wore a letter sweater, which was a sweater that had a letter on it. These are similar to the letter jackets worn today. Wearing scarfs on your head or around your neck was very in too. Boys usually wore jackets, usually a black leather jacket or club jacket, over a white t-shirt. The boys wore blue jeans and bowling shirts.Girls on the other hand preferred not to wear jeans. They wore fabric pants and skirts, or whatever felt comfortable.

People in the fifties enjoyed their friends and this started the "hanging out" fad that still lives on. Back in the fifties people loved records and record players. For the first time, they could purchase records they enjoyed and play them as often as they desired. Compared to the dependence on the radio station playing popular songs, the record player was a new convenience.

The drive-in movie was very popular! They actually had big theatres set up outside that youcould drive your car right up to! That's where a lot of teenagers spent their time on weekends.

You may think that the Hula Hoop was a fad born in the 1950s, but it is said that people were doing much the same thing with circular hoops made from grape vines and stiff grasses all over the world. More than three thousand years ago, children in Egypt played with large hoops of dried grapevines. However, the use and fad of hula hoops grew big in the fifties. It started in 1957, when a visitor from Australia had a conversation with two young boys from California. He mentioned that in Australia, bamboo hoops were used for exercises in gym class. These young boys were Richard Knerr and Arthur "Spud"
Melin, founders of the Wham-O Manufacturing Company of San Gabriel.
They began working on making a perfect hula hoop that would be easy to play with. Once they had the first hula hoop completed, they tested it on local playgrounds and found that it had the longest playing existence of any toy they had seen.

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