The Pin-Up look

The Pin-Up look.

Ever since seeing ‘The Blue Dahlia’ with the mysterious, icy cold and undoubtedly one of the most beautiful film sirens of the golden age of Hollywood, Veronica Lake, or perhaps it was ‘Gilda’ with the irresistibly seductive Rita Hayworth, whose charms had devastating consequences for men, I’ve been drawn to the femme Fatales of the 1940s and 50s.

What caught my interest was their immaculate look, the attention to details executed in the form of perfect make-up, hair and wardrobe that accentuated their beautiful bodies while cleverly hiding their weaknesses. It was an impossibly perfect look that found it’s opposite of the same era in the Pin-Up girl, a less sophisticated design, all sugary sweet like a cheesecake, smiling scantily-clad, seemingly doe-eyed innocents like Betty Grable, whose images were pinned to the walls of auto-shops and factories across America and were meant to make the soldiers of WWII forget for a brief moment that they were far away from home or perhaps remind them that the all American next door girl was waiting for their safe return. Though the 1940s was the era that popularised the pin-up look, its origins can be traced back to the 19^th Century when actresses, pinned their photographs to the walls of theatres as a form of advertisement. Then came the Gibson Girl, a look named after it’s creator Charles Gibson, who produced magazine covers of what was a man’s perspective on the ideal woman. A less pure and decidedly more naughty version came with the advent of the Ziegfeld Follies in New York. First produced in 1907, it was part Broadway show part Vaudeville, its notoriously lightly-clothed chorus dancers were known as Ziegfeld girls. One of them, Anna Mae, became the wife of Alberto Vargas, an American illustrator who’s pin-up girl images featured in Esquire Magazine and later Playboy.

The Pin-Up look

Inspired by the Pin-Up girls of the 1940s with an added modern twist and a dash of Femme Fatale I present my interpretation of The Pin-Up look.

Valentino silk top.

Max Mara pencil skirt

Wittchen pumps

CHANEL Arthur lipstick

CHANEL Pirate nailpolish