These looks, classy as they may have been, were styled around the restrictions of the day, and there were many. Nude hose were a must, as women were not "ladies" without them. Pants were largely a no-no, too.
Bras were pointy and tight. Girdles, a far cry from the malleable shapewear of today, were downright painful. And girdles were required. For example, during Sunday night's Pan Am episode, Christina Ricci's character, Maggie, reminded a colleague that an attendant caught without her girdle would be fired.
"These shows represent the romantic narrative of the past," said Alphonso McClendon, an assistant professor of fashion design at Drexel University, who is studying the role fashion played in the Harlem Renaissance.
"While the clothes are beautiful, they don't tell the complete story, especially when it comes to African Americans, civil rights, and the struggle for women in the corporate world," he said.
The shows and our current fashion mood stem from what many refer to as the turn-of-the-millennium casual nightmare that made it socially acceptable to wear jeans to upscale restaurants and to bare our midriffs, well, everywhere.
And then there is my pet peeve, how modern-day reality franchises like the Housewives, whether Basketball or Real, have taken once-classy and established labels and made them look, well, cheap. I'm thinking specifically of Herve Leger's banded dress, a favorite look of the tawdry housewives. Its image has been ruined.
Our longing for all things retro has led Banana Republic to roll out a Mad Men-inspired ready-to-wear women's collection for the second year in a row. Online sites such as OneStopPlus.com are offering popular '60s fashions worn by the "first ladies of the air."
