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of pageLast updated on 2nd December 2000
AB got in touch with me as a fellow lover of Fifties fashion; but unlike me, he was old enough to have experienced it first hand. He had so many tales that I decided the best thing to do with them was to divide them up into a sequence which would have its own page, and that's what I have done here: I will add new stories below as he sends them in.
The fifties was a magic time for Tight Skirts, I am sorry you were not
around to enjoy it. Moral standards were high then, women were more feminine
and wore skirts all the time. The more mature women in their thirties were
quite modest and liked to wear calf-length straight skirts that did not
ride up over their knees when they sat down. They also preferred a small
knife pleat at the back of the skirt instead of a slit for the same reason.
This is what I call a proper straight skirt, it was quite popular in the
mid fifties and the straight black skirt was almost a uniform for secretaries
working in offices. In order to preserve the skirt's slim lines the kick
pleat at the back was no longer than 1/3 the length of the skirt and 2
inches wide. But modesty came at a price. The calf-length skirt was only
4 inches wider at the hem than your hip measurement, slim women found it
quite limiting. You could not run in the skirt and the hem caught on your
legs when you walked. You certainly knew you were wearing it when you got
on a Bus or had to go up a step hill.
The first time I noticed a skirt like this, was the day I cut my hand
at the woodwork class at school and had to go to the school secretary for
First-Aid treatment. It was 1956 and I was 13. The school secretary was
a tall slim women in her late thirties called Mrs Seabridge. When I arrived
at her office she looked at my hand and got a chair to reach the First-Aid
box which was on the top shelf. As she moved to get the chair I noticed
she was wearing a slim-fitting straight black skirt which rustled softly
as it's narrow hemline caught on her legs. When she tried to get up on
the chair the skirt caught tightly around her knees with a swish and rustle
of nylon. She seemed surprised that she could not step up high enough in
the skirt and she started to hitch it up. She had the skirt well above
her knees before she realised I was looking at her legs. Mrs Seabridge
gave me a frosty look and let the skirt slip back down. Regaining her composure
she asked me to get the First-Aid box. She told me she could not get up
on the chair in this skirt and she flexed it tight with her knee to show
me the problem.
I got the First- Aid box for her and sat down on the chair so that she
could treat my hand. As she bent over me she had to spread her legs apart
to keep her balance making the hemline of the skirt catch tightly around
her legs. Her straight black skirt fascinated me, I looked at it with interest
as she treated my hand. It looked very inhibiting and I wonder what it
was like to wear and how she managed to walk in it. I was still looking
at the skirt when I noticed that Mrs Seabridge was looking at me and smiling.
She had noticed my interest in her skirt and she asked me if I liked it.
I was very embarrassed that she had noticed I was looking at her skirt,
but I told her I liked it. She told me the skirt looked nice but it was
not very practical and she spread her legs apart to show me how limiting
it was. She seemed willing to talk about the skirt so I took the opportunity
to ask her what it was like to wear and how she managed to walk in it.
Mrs Seabridge was very amused by my questions, she told me the skirt was
new and this was the first time that she had worn it. She said the skirt
looked good when she tried it on in the shop, but now she finds it's a
bit tight at the hem for her and she can't walk properly in it. She showed
me the kick pleat at the back of her skirt. She said it was supposed the
make the skirt easier to walk in, but it was not very effective and she
took a few steps around the office to show me the problem.
I loved to watch her walking around the school in this skirt especially
when she went the steps or had to walk up the steep school drive. I used
to look every day at school to see if she was wearing this skirt, unfortunately
I think she found it too limiting because she did not wear it very often.
This meeting with the school secretary changed my life.
When I was at school Mrs Seabridge was the only women in tight skirts
that I came in contact with. I tried cutting my finger on a day that she
was wearing her straight black skirt, but she had learnt her lesson and
now kept the First-Aid box on a lower shelf that did not require her to
get up on a chair. My mother would not wear them and said they were a nonsense
fashion. My younger sister was to young, as were all my girlfriends. In
the fifties straight skirts were said to be too "old" for young
teenage girls and were not the sort of thing that mothers wanted their
young daughters to wear. however this was about to change. Near me was
a girl called Judy that I knew. Judy went to the local girls school were
she had to wear a uniform of a dark grey skirt with a grey sweater and
a white blouse. Money was tight in the mid fifties and Judy's parents could
not afford to buy her a proper school skirt. To solve this problem Judy's
mother made her a straight grey skirt, which was easy to make and did not
use much fabric. Judy thought this was wonderful as she was now wearing
the latest fashion skirt with a slit at the back. She was admired by all
the boys and the envy of her friends who now looked rather dowdy in their
pleated skirts.
But Judy was too enthusiastic in her straight skirt and was always breaking
the stitches at the top of the slit which had to be repaired by her mother.
One morning I meet Judy at the bus stop as usual and noticed that she was
looking down at her skirt and flexing the hemline tight around her legs.
She told me that her mother had got fed up having to keep repairing her
skirt and she had sewn up the back slit right down to the hem, she had
also sewn a length of ribbon under the turn up of the hemline to stop her
breaking the seams. Judy said she could hardly walk in the skirt now and
was not sure if she would be able to get on the bus. I waited eagerly for
the bus to arrive and sure enough when she tried to get on the bus she
found she could not step up high enough in the skirt and she had to hitch
it up, to the delight of all the boys. Judy spent the rest of her school
days in this tight skirt. She got quite expert in wearing the tight skirt
and developed a hopping technique to get on the bus.
My wife used to do a lot dressmaking but she does not do much now. The
last thing she did was make 3 Bridesmaids dresses. The bride must have
a sadistic sense of humour. While she wore a traditional long white flared
wedding dress, She wanted the bridesmaids in ankle length black satin sheath
dresses. I was in when she came around to discuss it with my wife. She
had a smile on her face when she stressed to my wife that on no account
were the skirts to be slit, no matter what the Bridesmaids said.
When the dresses were finished, my wife showed me the hemlines on the
skirts and said she did not think that the girls would be able to walk
in them. The dresses looked fantastic, I made sure that I was in when the
girls came around to try them on.
The sight of these 3 teenage girls in their black satin dresses in my
front room nearly gave me a heart attack! The look of horror on the faces
of the girls as they tested the width of the skirts around their ankles,
and tried to walk in them was priceless. All of the girls wanted to have
the skirts slit, but my wife had to tell them that the bride would not
allow it.
My only regret is that I did not find out were the wedding was and go
along to take some photographs. It must have been a very entertaining afternoon
at the reception, watching the bridesmaids trying to walk around in those
tight dresses. They must have been glad to get out of them by the end of
the day.
I have not seen my wife make any bridesmaid dresses like this before.
I have seen several weddings were the bridesmaids are in satin dresses
with long narrow skirts that have no slit, while the bride is full skirted.
I am wondering if this is a joke that brides play on their bridesmaid friends.
Have
you come across any evidence of this? My research into tight skirts
has not uncovered any so far.
Continuing with my tight skirt experiences, when I left school in 1958 aged 15, I went to work in a TV shop as a apprentice TV engineer. Up until now I had not come into contact with many women in tight skirts, only Mrs Seabridge, my cousin Silvia and Jackie the girl who lived up the road. But when I left school all this was to change. Just down the road from the shop were I worked was a very exclusive ladies dress shop called "Lilley & Snook". In this shop worked a stunning young lady called Nicole Wilkes.
Nicole Wilkes was a very sophisticated lady who came from a well to do family. She was about 25 and looked like a fifties model, I was completely Mesmerised by her and thought she was a goddess. Nicole Wilkes like the rest of the girls in the shop wore a black twin set and pearls, with a calf-length straight black skirt. What fascinated me about Miss Wilkes was that she used to ride a Lambreta scooter wearing this skirt and high heels. She was one of those women of the late fifties who had worn straight skirts ever since they left school and felt completely at home in them.
In the summer of 1958 she used to ride the scooter down to Paignton Harbour to eat her packed lunch. I used to cycle down there and eat my lunch at a discreet distance so I could watch her. Riding a scooter in a tight skirt and high heels must have been quite a problem for her, but she made it look easy. Lambreta scooters have quite a wide platform, her tight skirt prevented her from putting both feet on the ground when she stopped so she would elegantly slide one leg over to allow her to put the other on down on the ground.
Starting a Lambreta in a tight skirt is also a problem as you cannot start it in the usual way of standing astride the machine and reaching back with your right leg to operate the kick start. Even standing on the right hand side of the machine Nicole Wilkes' skirt was too tight for her to operate the kick start in the normal way as she could not lift her leg up high enough. The only way she could start the Lambreta was to stand on the right hand side, hold the handle bars and reach up backwards with her left leg to operate the kick start.
I had many happy lunch hours watching Miss Wilkes unwittingly demonstrating the art of how to ride a scooter in a tight skirt. I sorely missed her when she left to get married.
Webmaster's note: this experience obviously dates from the period of the "New Glamour" when to my delight Fashion decreed a revival of Fifties styles with pencil skirts, high heels, short waisted jackets and other lovely things - but alas, it didn't catch on. I never saw a New Glamour outfit myself; it seems AB was luckier. I wish that I had been there, and had had the courage to offer her help...
When I was walking around the harbour the other day I remembered a tight skirt experience that I had there about 5 years ago. My home town is a bit like yours when it comes to ladies fashion, it's non existent
normally! It's only in the holiday season when the visitors arrive that things look up. About 5 or 7 years ago the straight skirt made a brief comeback and girls that had not worn it before were trying it for the first time.
I was walking down from the bus station to the harbour and in front of me was a small group of people who were obviously visitors as they had just got off of a coach at the bus station.
With the group was a rather plain girl with glasses, she was in her late teens and looked like she might be a clerk in a solicitors office. What caught my eye was the 50's style dark navy straight skirt that she was
wearing. The skirt was well below the knees and had a small knife pleat at the back. As this was a rare sighting of my favourite skirt style I decide to follow at a discrete distance as the group started off towards the
harbour. All the group were wearing trousers and as they walked down the road the girl moved awkwardly in her tight skirt as she tried to keep up with them.
By the time the party reached the road that runs around the harbour the girl in the tight skirt was several yards behind them and looking distinctly embarrassed. On the pavement the other side of the road there is a
chain fence to stop people running out into the road from behind a building. The family group crossed over the road and stepped over the chain fence completely oblivious to the problems the girl was having with her
tight skirt. By the time the girl got to the fence on the edge of the pavement the rest of the group were several yards away. The girl quickly tried to step over the fence, but she found to her dismay that her skirt was
too tight and she could not step up high enough in it. She was now in the embarrassing situation of being stuck in the road with all the traffic and unable to get on the pavement because of her tight skirt. With all the
people around she was not about to hitch up her skirt to step over the fence so she had to walk down the road to the end of the fence to get on the pavement. By which time the rest of the party had disappeared. I
suspect the girl felt rather foolish because she looked around to see if anybody was looking at her. I reluctantly decided not to follow her in case she had noticed me.
Webmaster's note: this reminiscence was inspired by my writing to A.B. to talk about the film "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" which you can read about on my Films page. In this enjoyable piece of early-Sixties nonsense, the crew of the submarine "Sea View" includes Barbara Eden and Joan Fontaine, who wear elegant tailored blouses, fitted jackets, medium-heeled stilettos and tight knee-length skirts tapered to narrow hems. I was particularly struck by one scene in which Joan Fontaine, leaving the bridge, comes to the watertight door with its sill a few inches high: the hemline of her pencil skirt is so tight that she can't raise her foot enough to step over it, so she deftly and elegantly turns sideways so that she can kick each foot out to the back to get it over the sill. This reminded A.B. of something:
Talking about The Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea reminded me of an incident that I witnessed in Devonport Dockyard in the summer of 1982.A.B. would like to hear from anyone else who saw that girl that day. I don't feel it's very likely anyone else at Devonport that morning is reading this story, but if you met a girl in an elegant but too-narrow pencil skirt on H.M.S Arrow at Devonport in 1982, which you please write in and tell us about it?
Women's life styles were changing so rapidly in the late fifties that tight skirts were beginning to be a nuisance. To give you an example of this in the late fifties I used to hang about in a coffee bar which was near to the offices of a wholesale pharmaceutical company. The girls that worked in these offices all wore the standard "uniform" of a straight navy,grey or black skirt and used to frequent the coffee bar after work. These girls in their tight skirts used to draw me to that coffee bar like a magnet. There was one girl that I really fancied called May Daltrey In her straight black skirt and stilettos she was pure poetry in motion. It was at a time that a new dance craze called, "The Twist." was all the rage. One evening I plucked up courage and asked May Daltrey if she would like to dance. She smiled sweetly and told me that she could not dance with me because she was wearing a tight skirt and she spread her legs apart to show me the problem. I thought at the time that this was just an excuse not to dance with me, but a few weeks later to everybodys amusement two other girls from the office were trying to dance the Twist in their straight skirts and were complaining about how restricting the skirts were.
You may remember a few months ago I sent you a picture of a girlfriend I had called Daphne. The picture shows her wearing a slim-fitting straight navy skirt that her Grandmother made for her to wear for work as a hotel receptionist. You would have liked Daphne, she always wore her skirts very tight fitting. She ditched me for a boy called Len Jones who had a Lambreter motor scooter, I could see this coming as he was always hanging around with us, mind you that was nothing new with Daphne. Her good looks, full bust, tight skirt and high heels attracted men like flies around a jam pot. I knew I would not be able to hold on to her for long.
One day when I was meeting Daphne from work, surprise, surprise, Len Jones appears on his scooter to chat her up. Daphne showed an interest in learning how to ride his motor scooter, so we go to a nearby car park were she can have a go riding it. Fortunately for me, Daphne having just left work is still wearing her straight navy skirt and high heels. I can't wait to see how she is going to manage riding this motor scooter in that skirt. Daphne on the other hand is so excited about riding the scooter that she is completely oblivious to the problems that she will have with her straight skirt.
As soon as she takes over the motor scooter the shortcomings of her skirt style become apparent when she finds that she cannot operate the kick start. I suggests that she hitches up her tight skirt to make it easier. But Len Jones shows me up for the cad that I am by starting the scooter for her. Having got the scooter started Daphne now pushes it off of the stand and tries to get on it. Unfortunately for her she cannot get her legs astride the scooter platform as her skirt is not wide enough to allow this and she has to sit on it side-saddle. Daphne looks very awkward and unsteady in her straight skirt as she can only put one foot down on the ground. She asked Len Jones to hold the scooter while she hitched up her skirt. But her skirt was so tight that even with it half way up her thighs she could not sit astride the motor scooter and she was forced to abandon her driving lesson.
In the fifties I lived on the top of a steep hill over looking the town were I lived. One of the advantages of living on top of this hill was that on my way home from school I usually came across one or two women struggling up the hill in tight skirts. The hill was quite steep and if no one was around they usually hitched up their tight skirts to make life easier. The trick was to cycle up the hill as quietly as I could and try and catch them with their skirts above their knees.
There was a young women who lived in my part of the town who worked in a Solicitors office. She was about 20 to 25 years old, I had often seen her on my way home from school. She was very prim and proper with a very reserved dress sense. I had never taken much notice of her until one day when I was cycling home from school, I saw her in front of me wearing the tightest skirt I have ever seen. It was that period in the fifties when there was a craze amongst young women for making their skirts as tight as possible. (See Diana, Bygones page7) They used to sew up the kick pleat at the back of their skirts and taper the side seams so that they could only just walk in them. We had just started to go up the step hill, so I dismounted so that I could get a good look at her in the tight skirt. The skirt was well below her knees and she had tapered the side seams so much that she could hardly walk in it. I could hardly believe my luck and started to walk as slow as I could to get a good look at her. The trouble was she was walking so slow in the skirt I was catching her up no matter how slow I walked.
I was about 20 yards behind her pushing my Bike quietly on the pavement, when she suddenly turned around and started walking backwards up the hill, as it is easier to go up a steep hill backwards in a tight skirt. I was horrified, I was now in the embarrassing situation of walking behind a women who was walking up a hill backwards in a tight skirt, watching me, watching her walking up the hill backwards in her tight skirt. The women gave me a very frosty look, she obviously knew what I was up too. I felt like a little boy who had been caught peeping into the ladies toilet, I just wanted to run off, but that would have been admitting my guilt so I just carried on and pretended that I had not noticed the problem she was having with her skirt. In that tight skirt she was not going anywhere fast so I had no choice but to catch her up. She was walking with her hands on her thighs like she was going to hitch up her skirt, not that it would have done her any good. The skirt was so tapered the hemline would have jammed around her thighs before she got it up very far. As I walked past I smiled at her, but she just glared at me, it was so embarrassing.
I never saw her wear that skirt again. I think it must have been a fashion experiment that turned into a nightmare. I can imaging that she altered the skirt the night before and wore it the next day without trying it on properly. It must have a nightmare having to hobble about in the tight skirt all day only to find that some horrible boy follows you up the hill on your way home. Bit like a "Biker" cartoon.
