That's a... gorgeous look
Hi, it's your meme mom! Aand
this video is going to be in Polish as well so
switch. ze subtitles. on. right now.
Hi.
Today we'll go back in time to the 1950s
And usually when I say 1950s, people think
Huge petticoats! Circle skirts!
ElvIs PrEsLEeEeY
But when I say 1950s in Poland
Well, that's a bit different.
Why is it that way? Mainly because
life in Poland was kinda harsh back then
The 1950s - I mean the first half
were deep into stalinism
And fashion was the tiniest of peoples' worries
They were slightly more worried not to say anything improper
so they don't end up in prison, for example.
But if someone had the time *awkward giggle* and energy
you could be interested in fashion as well.
But it wasn't easy - because fashion was considered
a very "Western" area of interest
Fashion was considered very "American",
something pointless, because
why would you need fashion when driving a tractor?
And to be honest
if someone was interested in fashion
they were automatically a bit suspicious
because it might have been a way to
express how committed you were to the "Western", hostile culture.
So generally speaking, it was BAD.
Of course we had Polish fashion magazines, we had Polish centralized factories
Clothes were being produced,
but it's mentioned in lots of diaries
that those clothes were
WeEaAak.
That the clothes were bad quality, and the patterns not fashionable
that the patterns were from a couple of years back
that the fabrics were, I don't know, like, a bit coarse and rough
that it was practically unwearable.
So most of the Polish women that cared to look at least a bit elegant and fashionable
they had to find alternative ways to do it.
For example, my grandma had an aunt in the USA
A typical "american aunt" lots of Poles have
And so she received packages from her and there were AMAZING pieces there
We still have a couple of those american dresses and you can tell
they're very well made even for today's standards
So I'm sure that back in... how long ago was that? A LONG TIME AGO
it must have been really impressive,
especially when compared with Polish clothing
that were worse quality.
If someone didn't have an "American aunt",
they could help themselves buying at "ciuchy",
that meant buying clothing at local markets where people sold things they received in packages from relatives abroad
Or you could make your own clothes, or have a seamstress do it for you
and a good, trustworthy seamstress was a very desirable "institution" back then
Almost every family had their seamstress and they treasured her
FiILleEmMoON
Generally speaking, it was good to know how to sew
And if someone knew how to make things from strange and unusual fabrics
that was also a very valuable skill.
*cat mama voice* And you can't sew! You can't!
But when you compare photos from the era
with American, French or British photographs
There's a BIG difference.
And I'm not saying Poles look worse, they just looked completely different.
And if we focus on the pattern itself, the mainstream fashion dresses
were indeed full, with colourful novelty prints
Elegant accessories were very much in fashion
Every woman - well, maybe not every, but a lot of them wore gloves, pearl necklaces, sunglasses
kitten heels, etc
But during the very same time in Poland, especially early 1950s
We were a couple years "late" and a lot of women still wore 1940s style clothing
You can see that especially when looking at the hair
that in other countries were more often than not worn really short,
especially in the early 50s,
while in Poland - up to mid-1950s - women wore shoulder-length hair
so the difference was quite noticeable.
Of course, not all women did, but the fact that longer hair "survived"
and it was cut short in Western countries
It shows how cut off we were from foreign influences
and every fashion came to us with a huge delay.
Ok, that's enough introduction
I'll be saying more stuff later
And because I don't want to spend any more time looking like your aunt Mary
I'll get rid of this right now.
Or you know what, I'll start with contact lenses, it's a regular part of my
'Get Ready With Me' and people seem to love seeing me put fingers in my eyes, so we'll start with contact lenses.
So my hair is a bit longer than shoulder length these days
And in the 1950s the mainstream fashion was very much into shorter hair.
So if we're going for, let's say, 1954, my hair would be much shorter even in Poland
So I'm gonna do a little magic trick and pin them in place without brushing
and I'll pretend it's just a very strong curl on very short hair.
Generally speaking, perm was a huge thing back then, you probably know that from
your *struggles with Polish pronunciation* grandmas and great-grandmas
That's why the hair was quite curly.
Polish hairstyles seem to have been a little more simple than the foreign ones, like if you compare
hairstyles worn by Polish stars - well, not really stars, actresses from the era
and foreign actresses, the Polish hairstyles
still look very much like it's 1949,
while the foreign hair is much more modern and every lock and wave has it's own place
Even the hair stylists from the era, either American or French, had this theory that each curl
has it's own place, should be curled in the right direction
and the whole hairstyle was supposed to be a thought-through construction
Well, in Poland that wasn't really an achievable look
also because we were cut off from the newest trends
so everybody had to do their best.
But if you compare the hair with what we wear nowadays, it's still pretty complex.
Ok, now I'm gonna use about a million of bobby pins
and I'm gonna try to pin it cleverly
so it looks sort of like it has something to do with 1950s.
You might have heard family stories about women using beer for their hairstyles
I think they used it for setting their hair on rollers or curlers
because it helps preserving the curl.
I haven't tried it myself, but I know girls that experimented with beer and it works.
Oh, great! There are two more rollers left in the back, that great Karolina
This should be called "How To Look Like Your Grandma - Tutorial"
To be honest, when I was doing my research on Polish fashion
after the war, so late 1940s and early 1950s
I was actually surprised how much Polish women cared about their appearance
Because the government propaganda said that clothing has to be simple and comfortable
and we should keep it low-key
And if we pay too much attention to our looks and our clothing
It's not what an ideal female should be, surprisingly.
We should be clean, the clothing should be neat,
but it shouldn't be too extravagant.
And you can really see it in the magazines from the era,
even in the fashion magazines it's always said that
it's more important that the clothes are simple and functional
It always says "restraint", that the clothes should be restrained
But when you look at the photographs, you can see that
the propaganda said one thing, and people did something else, most people wore what they felt like wearing
Obviously to a certain extent,
you had to be careful not to cross the line
because extravagance, especially the luxurious accessories etc,
were reminiscent of the pre-war period,
back when society was divided into aristocracy, the middle class etc
So you definitely didn't want to be reminiscent of the aristocracy,
if you lived in Poland back in... the times... I am speaking about right now
Can you even see anything? *doorbell*
Ok, I'm gonna put some light on my face WOOOOW
Ok, so these are my 1950s hair
So what was I saying before the postman came
Oh, yeah, so that was reminiscent of the aristocracy
and back then in Poland, life was crap for aristocrats
So, my hair is done
If I wanted a truly historically accurate make up, this is where I'm sort of done
and I would just add some lipstick
And maybe some powder, but let's be honest
Nowadays it's hard for us to get some American products,
but back then the make up industry in Poland was sort of dead
I'm gonna have to go and change, I can't keep talking in my pyjamas like that, it's awful
The light today is
TrRuUlLY InTrEsTiInG
It's actually interesting, because I read that
even using red lipstick was considered "too much" back then
But I think it was such a popular trend back from the WW2 era
that it was impossible to just kill it and say that wearing lipstick is lame
Because even in the early 1950s colored propaganda movies
you can clearly see the actresses wearing red lipstick
and I don't think they would be shown wearing lipstick as a prime example of a socialist woman
if that lipstick would have been a problem.
So this I think is an example of over-interpreting things
because I don't think wearing lipstick could have cost you a job or something.
Still, a lot of women didn't wear it, and if we compare it to let's say US, France or UK
where colored lipstick was incredibly common
in different shades, and it was obvious that you use it and never leave your house without it
then yes, Poland was very different if you compare it that way.
And also, Polish lipstick usually weren't that vibrant
They were dimmed, as was everything really, if you look at the clothes for example
What's typical about them is how dimmed and desaturated the colors are.
And those clothes from the early socialist years
are pretty much as grey and dull as life was back then.
I'm speaking of course about Polish clothes.
So now I'm gonna go and wear a dress
which you could say is a reproduction of what women would have worn
The pattern is those tiny white dots on a
background that's a shade of cappucino coffee... with cocoa?
No, that's not the shade.
The colour is based on the designs that appeared in the Polish magazines at the time
and also on the films from the era, which are awful
I mean, I didn't really understand what the propaganda was and how the first years of stalinism worked
until I watched those movies.
It fascinating and scary at the same time
because it's kind of like watching, I don't know,
like watching private videos from some kind of a cult, and you don't know what's going on, and everyone's using this weird language
So in these movies the female characters
often appear in dresses like this one
which are quite specific, I would say typically Polish, or at least typically Eastern Block
Because they are not following the mainstream fashion, but at the same time are heavily influenced by it
The Polish dresses often have really high necklines,
often have collars or the neckline is really tiny that completely covers the neck
They have quite fitting bodices
though the Polish dresses are often much more loose at the waist than the "foreign" dresses
and the skirt is not full, it's made of several pieces which gives it a more "A" shape
than the full look we know from the 1950s movies
Aaand this is what I've noticed watching those socialist realism movies
This particular dress was based on a movie called "Adventure on Mariensztat"
The female protagonist wears a similar dress in a couple of scenes
and my suspicion is that all of the other actresses in the movie are wearing their own clothes
and it's also possible that the leading actress is wearing her own clothes in the movie, because
this was a norm for Polish filmmakers at the time
Even Danuta Szaflarska (Polish actress) mentioned how they didn't have any money so she had to wear her own clothes
her best dress, to the film shoots
So I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case for "Adventure on Mariensztat"
There's a lot of threads here that shouldn't be here.
Ok, I'll be back in a minute.
Ok... Damn the light is going to drive me crazy today, what is even happening
So here's the dress
I'll show you the whole thing in a bit, meanwhile let's focus on the accessories
Obviously there isn't a lot of them
But they had SOMETHING. Mainly I've noticed women on the photographs wearing simple watches
This is my grandma's watch, and watches like this
were considered to be a practical accessory of a working woman
Then I have these fake pearls, they're also 1950s and also my grandma's
But this was a more elegant thing. I mean
it was something you would wear to a house party, to someone's nameday party
but you wouldn't really wear those everyday, like to work
I mean it also depended on the type of work you do, but it wasn't very practical
CoOme On
It shouldn't really look like that, they should be a bit more loose, but let's leave it that way
So when it comes to an early Polish People's Republic look
this is pretty much it. A lot will change after the Khrushchev's Thaw
in the mid-1950s, when the Western influences will become more accessible
and this was also the case with fashion
Some products, which Polish women had to either search for or make themselves, had become available
Even things as simple as ballet flats
it was impossible to get those in Poland and you needed to be really creative
A Polish designer Barbara Hoff came up with a way of making ballet flats out of tennis shoes
So when it comes to the beginning of 1950s, it was a very modest look
What I'm wearing here would still be considered quite elegant
Most women would wear separates, like skirts and shirts and jackets
I think it was also due to the fact that a lot of them worked
while in the Western culture
especially in the post-war USA the idea of housewives staying at home
taking care of the kids and the house, while in Poland it wasn't really possible
because, let's say, you worked a night shift at a factory and couldn't take care of the house all the time
I think the percentage of women working full time jobs was higher in Poland at the time
and that reflects in fashion, which had to be practical.
Which of course doesn't mean people weren't creative and coming up with their own solutions
THIS DRESS IS HOT
Ok, let me show you the whole thing and we're done.
That's it, merci
And I'm off... to bake a brain
Seriously.
Life's full of surprises.
Hi! Just reminding you that my book "Polish beauty" is out on December 5th
*here I'm talking about how you can order it online, but if you're not Polish, you can't yet*
*but I'm working on it and if you really want to it will be available in December!*
*here I shout "BUY" very awkwardly and proceed to exit the frame*