History of American Fashion Movies & TV
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In this adaptation of a turn-of-the-century operetta, actress Lana Turner is a wealthy, young widow. In the film, a voluptuous Turner dons a strapless black corselette with attached garters. Her seductive attire sparked a fashion craze that held strong throughout the 1950s (and, in fact, reemerged in the 1980s with the help of a new icon of sensuality—Madonna).
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James Dean and Natalie Wood star in this blockbuster hit about teen angst and rebellion. Dean’s casual attire in the film—blue jeans and a cotton t-shirt—had previously been a hallmark of the uniform of the working class, but the tremendous success of the movie helped redefine this garb as sexy and entirely cool.
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Blonde Hollywood bombshell and fashion icon Marilyn Monroe plays a young model, both innocent and alluring, in this 1955 box-office hit about a married man with an over-active imagination. In perhaps Monroe's most memorable on-screen moment, she stands over a subway grate as a sudden burst of air blows her white dress skyward.
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After inadvertently witnessing the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre, two young men go incognito as members of a traveling, all-girl band. Dressed in drag and unable to reveal their true identities, one must mask his feelings for a lovely bandmate while the other must fend off an aggressive male suitor.
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When Diane Keaton donned the layered and androgynous looks of her title character in this 1977 classic film directed by Woody Allen, she sparked a new fashion trend among women who were living through the Second Wave of the Feminist Movement.