Rockabilly Culture

The Exaggeration of the Rockabilly Culture | Denimhunters | #denimhunters
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How did the rockabilly craze begin? Rockabilly music as a genre never really took off, but there are
a few very famous exceptions, namely Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. But even their rockabilly heyday
only lasted for a few years. In this interview from Collectors Weekly, vintage lover and lifestyle
expert Kim Casamassima discusses the rockabilly fashions of the 1950s and explains how the
vintage rockabilly look has been revived and adapted over the years. She also discusses the stylistic
http://denimhunters.com/2012/07/rockabillyculture/ (27 of 52)02/06/2014 23:02:11
clichs and misperception that often stand in the way of an accurate understanding of the decade, a
time when even tough guys wore penny loafers and pompadours were the exception rather than the
rule.
How did your appreciation for vintage begin? My parents were hippies who refinished and
sold Art Deco furniture. So Ive had an appreciation for old things since I was a kid. Ive been
around antiques and vintage pieces my whole life. I think the first classic 1950s movie I sawI was
maybe 17was Where the Boys Are. I loved the campiness and the clothes. It struck me like,
Oh God, I love those dresses. It was a relatively short hop from wearing them to eventually
selling them. So I quit my real job in retail and started selling online fulltime. When you first start
out, you assume the thrift stores are going to be a goldmine for vintage, but you end up buying
things that dont sell. So you move on. Im at the point now where I place newspaper ads to buy
vintage.
What styles are you particularly drawn to within 1950s fashion? I love the rockabilly bad girl/bad
guy thing. It starts with the B-movies, the rock n roll movies, the hot rod and juvenile delinquent
movies from the 50s. The characters are always teenagers. They listen to rock n roll and tick off
their parents by driving fast, smoking cigarettes, and wearing their clothes a little too tight. It wasnt
called rockabilly in the 50s. It wasnt even necessarily a lifestyle. The word rockabilly describes the
lifestyle as we see it now. Back then, it was just teens being teens.
When was the term rockabilly coined? It comes from the combination of rock n roll and hillbilly
music. I think the first time it showed up in a song was around 1955 with Rockabilly Boogie by
Johnny Burnette. It wasnt really a word that was thrown around a lot back then. The word was
revived in the 70s. People were reacting against disco and some of the other musical genres of that
time. They just wanted to get back to classic rock n roll. There was a 50s revival then, and a lot of
rockabilly bands startedLevi Dexter, the Polecats. In the 80s, of course, we had the Stray Cats.
Theyre probably the most famous rockabilly-revival band. The look really blew up again in the
90s. Its not even a subculture anymore because its pretty much everywhere. You can go and buy a
strapless dress with cherries on it, and its called rockabilly. The terme has really been bastardized
when you start selling the clichd 50s looks like the cherries and flames. Its sort of a mockery of
what 50s fashion really was.
Fifties purists arent into the clichs like driving a pink Cadillac and sipping a milkshake at a diner.
Theyd much rather just wear their 50s clothes, drive their 50s cars, and listen to the original bands
over any neo-rockabilly group. I dont really want to put a label on anyone, but theres the modern
rockabilly crowd thats all about the flames, cherries, and buying repro bowling shirts. Then theres
group B, who are into the classic, pure 50s vintage gear and music.
So do 50s purists collect the cars? Absolutely. They definitely go after the classic 50s cars. They
want a Mid-Century Modern home built in the 1950s or 60s, and theyll completely redecorate their
house period-correct 1950s. Some people wont buy microwaves or cell phones. I think thats
pushing it. But the purists are very much about getting back to this romanticized, classic era of
living.
What are some of the key clothes for the classic rockabilly look? Nobody really walked around
looking like the Fonz or one of the T-Birds from Grease. Thats a clich. The leatherjacket and
cuffed jeans were born not so much as a fashion statement, but out of necessity with the emergence
of the California hot-rod culture. It was a blend of that and Southern moonshine runners. The black
leather jackets and engineer boots were almost like their uniform. They served a purpose.
Cuffed Levis jeans have always been the choice for anybody on the rockabilly scene. But these
werent worn to make a statement either. Clothes were passed down in families from one brother to
the next. A lot of times if the jeans didnt fit, you cuffed them up. The modern rockabilly guy,
though, wears the leather jacket, the cuffed jeans, and Converse sneakers. They were worn to play
basketball, too, in gym, but somehow thats also been bastardized over the years as the uniform of
the rockabilly guy.
For shoes, believe it or not, a lot of men wore penny loafers. We always assume it was either
engineer boots or a pair of Converse, a pair of Chucks. But they wore penny loafers or dress shoes
because thats what they had and because they were leather. Like a leather jacket, they took a
beating and lasted a long time. Its kind of funny to think of a tough guy wearing penny loafers.
For women, pencil skirts and cardigan sweaters, always on the tight side. You see that classic
outfit in just about every 50s juvenile-delinquent movie; the tighter the better. Towards the end of
the era, when the country was starting to see more beatniks, the women were wearing oversized
cowl-neck sweaters and tight, black stirrup pants. Thats almost an entirely different subculture than
the bad girls and guys. The good girls wore the full skirts and full dresses.

Where did the Fonz style come from? There was a lot of 50s nostalgia in the 70s. I think the
creators of Happy Days took the Fonz character from Marlon Brando in The Wild Onethe
bad-guy biker wearing a black leather jacket, white T-shirt, and jeans. After the shows first couple
of seasonsthe Fonzs original persona was deemed too threatening for 70s audienceshe became
less tough, more like a buddy, and a little more lighthearted.
In the 50s, bikers were portrayed as booze hounds. They started fights. They were threatening.
They were scary in the 50s movies. By the early 60s, all the campy beach movies like Beach
Blanket Bingo also had a biker gang in them, but they werent tough and threatening. They were
goofy. They were like bikers on Gilligans Island. Everything was a lot more lighthearted at that
time. Of course, by the late 60s, things got much more serious.
What patterns and colors are prominent in the rockabilly look? Pink and black shirts for men
seem to be coveted. Its funny because real men didnt wear pink in the 50s. A man was a man
and a woman was a woman. They wore cotton, button-down leisure shirts. Labels like Campus and
McGregor came out with a lot of plaids. In the 50s, most teenagers and men in their 20s dressed the
same waya pair of dress slacks and a plaid shirt. Guys didnt walk around with a pompadour and
sideburns and cuffed jeans and a leather jacket. There was a strong dress policy in most schools.
They wouldve been kicked out.
To show that you were a tough guy, youd do little things like roll up your sleeve cuffs, turn your
belt to the left and the buckle over to the side, peg your pants, roll them up and cuff the bottoms.
That was their way of saying, Dont confuse me with Joe Schmo the football player. It wasnt
pompadours and sideburns, no way.
Did women and girls have different looks? It really was the tighter clothing. A girl would cause a
sensation by showing up at school wearing a tight sweater with a bullet bra underneath. A bad girl
who wanted to get by without causing a stir in school would go along and wear button-down shirt
dresses, full-circle skirts with a blouse and maybe a patent leather belt to go with it.
Rock n roll was seen as a threat in a lot of areas. You saw a little bit of it in Great Balls of Fire,
that movie about Jerry Lee Lewis. Elvis came on screen, did his dance, and it was mayhem. So I
think a lot of teenagers knew better than to go to school dressed a certain way. I think most of them
stuck to the rules. The tight stuff came out after school and on weekends. Thats when they really
rebelled.
Where these clothes were worn varied across the country. For example, the hot rod clubs of the 50s
originated in California, not so much here in the northeast. Here, going to drive-ins or the clich
diners was the thing to do. Maybe out West or in the South youd go drag racing, kind of like what
you see in Rebel Without a Cause. That movie created a spike in the Hanes white T-shirt sales
because James Dean wore one. Who wouldve thought?
Did the fashion differ regionally? I think it was pretty much the same across the U.S.
The fashion, music, movies, and whole subculture also made it to England. England is kind of like
our sister country when it comes to interest in the 50s, even with the resurgence in the 70s of the
Teddy Boys, or the Teds. The Teds were into rock and roll and that whole scene, but their fashion
was completely different. Thats one major difference among the 50s subcultures of the U.S. and
England.
Here, a guy might wear his buttoned-down shirt rolled up and his jeans cuffed. The Teddy Boys
were a lot more polished. They had their clothes tailored, and they were pricey. They wore long,
draped jackets with a velvet collar and high-waisted trousers, or drainpipe trousers as they were
called. Thats also where creepers were born. They were actually leftover military surplus from
World War II.
So designers werent a big part of rockabilly? Not at all, heck no. The rockabilly scene was
working class. The guys would have to get an after-school job, maybe working with a local
mechanic. A lot of the teenagers in the 50s drove cars from the 40s or earlier because they had to
work for it. Thats partly where the engineer boots and cuffed jeans come from. Youre not going to
wear your dress pants and penny loafers when you had to work on your old car.
Hairstyles for women also changed between the beginning of the decade and the end. Towards the
end of the 1950s you saw a lot of backcombing, and the beehive came along by the early 60s. If you
were to open up a high school yearbook and look at a picture of a guy from 1945, he wouldnt look
any different than a guy from 1955. Hairstyles for men really didnt start changing until the late 60s
when longer hair came in vogue, thanks to the Beatles. The pompadour with sideburns is also a
clich. Sideburns werent allowed in high schools in the 50s. That was not something your average
18-year-old would be wearing to high school. Thats more like the outfit of the modern rockabilly
guy.
Its like tattoos now. A 50s purist would know that you dont get a sleeve of tattoos. That was not
at all common. Returning sailors from World War II would come back with an anchor tattoo. So
tattoos are definitely a modern spin on the 50s. Tattoos were generally reserved for military men.
How did the pompadour become a part of rockabilly in he first place? Elvis had a pompadour, of
sorts. It wasnt a big quiff like the Teddy Boys wore. It wasnt all hair-sprayed, backcombed, and
teased. Elvis had a very conservative pompadour and slight sideburns if you look at a lot
of photographs from the 50s. Tony Curtis was Elviss inspiration more than James Dean. The huge,
pork chop sideburns were Elviss fashion in the 70s. I think the sideburns of the 70s rockabilly
revival took their cue from Elviss sideburns at the time.
Its important to remember that the amin audience for all of this were 14- to 20-year olds. That was
the dominant age group. They were the ones who went to see the cheesy sci-fi movies or the rock n
roll flicks with Little Richard and Bill Haley. Actually, Bill Haleys Rock Around the Clock is the
first rock and roll song ever heard in a movie, Blackboard Jungle from 1955. Thats really what
started it.
These days, rockabilly seems to keep getting trendier and trendier. Its never really gone away
since the 80s. The newer generations are maybe in their early 20s. A lot of them get started with the
repro stuff, but they eventually get into vintage. The cool thing about vintage is that you can like
any era. You can wear something from the 70s with something from the 50s and make it look
modern and really cool. You can mix it up.
Since this was a youth-driven fashion, what were other people wearing in the 50s? For older
men, professional men, towards the end of the 50s and into the 60s, theyd wear clothes like what
we see on Mad Men. In general, the standard suit of the working businessman included a skinny
lapel, skinny tie, cufflinks, and a skinny belt. The common housewife would wear a cotton button-
down day dress. The difference between, say, a 30-year-old housewifes cotton dress and a 15-year-
olds would be the cutesy things like ballerinas and poodles on the teen dresses.
By the end of the 40s and into the 50s, consumerism was booming. There was no shortage of
fabrics. It was a happier and lighter time. People were getting jobs and making money. Womens
fashion during the war years tended to be a little more masculine, as seen in the jackets with big
shoulders. Womens clothing became more feminine in the 50s.
For more inspiring articles visit Kim Casamassimas vintage-clothing blog, The Girl Cant Help It.
The picture in the this article are not necessarily related to the statements, but merely function as
visual inspiration.
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The Exaggeration of the Rockabilly Culture | Denimhunters | #denimhunters

Guide: How to Rinse Your Jeans 3 days ago

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