Title:  a date with judy - cute late 40s fashion
Posted:  Wednesday 29 February 2012 @ 17:38
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I've been meaning to post this for a while, actually! The film A Date With Judy has a plot that is neither here nor there - it serves almost entirely as a vehicle to show off the singing of Jane Powell and the looks of Elizabeth Taylor. There is also some random Carmen Miranda thrown in for no reason than that MGM didn't seem to know what to do with her. But it does have some cute outfits! Here are my highlights.



I love this suspender skirt that Jane wears at the very beginning of the film. My favourite aspect is that you'd expect it to be a typical suspender skirt but she turns around and whoosh, it's a halterneck. Such a cute detail.



Elizabeth's dance dress demonstrates the best of junior miss fashion at this time. The colour suits her so wonderfully and I love the lace apron/peplum. So beautiful.


I'm not crazy about this dress of Jane's overall but I love the slashed sleeves. Such a nice idea to add a bit of detail to a simple blouse or dress.



I think this is my favourite dress in the whole film. It demonstrates that 'not quite New Look'-look very well. It has a full skirt in a longer length than would have been seen a couple of  years earlier but we still have the very strong shoulders of the 40s that hadn't quite been transformed into the softer, rounded shoulders of the 50s. However, this suits Elizabeth very well as it just serves to emphasise that teensy waist.




This outfit is another knockout, this time a sequinned ivy printed circle skirt (it's a very heavy weight, I think it might be quilted but I'm not sure) with a high, shaped waist and a black off the shoulder top with sequinned ivy detail on the back. So glamorous, she looks like a Greek goddess.



This is my favourite of Jane's dresses - a simple pink and black stripe with black ribbon detail on the neckline, sleeves and waist. So cute! 




I would like to show off this dress to say a) oh my goodness that waist and b) giraffes! I couldn't get any really clear shots but look, she is wearing a giraffe dress. I love it.



And here we have bonus adorable pearl grey silk mandarin-collared pyjamas as worn by Jane. Although I'm not crazy about the addition of the gingham (I'm guessing that's so she's not seen as sexy and Very Definitely Sixteen? I don't know), they're still adorable.


You can see a lot more of my screenshots in this album at my Flickr where there are quite a few and you can see Carmen Miranda wearing an outfit that I swear is the inspiration for Cathy Freeman's running outfit for the 400m at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.