The Memorial Day weekend dances are fast approaching (this weekend already) and I thought it might be helpful to provide links to some sites that cover fashion and hair for the periods being featured (20’s & 30’s Sat. night, 40’s on Sun. night in Tampa). Keep in mind that some or most fashions might look great, but not be very realistic for dancing.

No matter how you decide to dress up, when it comes to the hairdo for the ladies, I highly suggest you try doing it one night before the night of the dance. Doing it once before will give you an idea of how long it will take and what problems you might run into. With that said, below are links broken out by fashion and hair for the 20’s, 30’s , and 40’s eras:

20’s Fashion
http://www.fashion-era.com/flapper_fashion_1920s.htm
http://www.1920-30.com/fashion/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920s_in_fashion

20’s Hair
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapper
There is much more information available for women’s 20’s styled hair, just do a search on “finger waves” in Google and take your pick

30’s Fashion
http://www.murrayonhawaii.com/nolan/fashionhistory_1930mens.html
http://www.angelfire.com/retro/lisawebworld/30sfashion.html
http://www.fashion-era.com/stylish_thirties.htm

30’s Hair
http://www.hairfinder.com/hairstyling/1930b.htm
http://www.fashion-era.com/hats-hair/hats_hair_8a_hairstyles_history_1930_1940.htm
http://www.revampvintage.com/30shairstyles.html

40’s Fashion and Hair
http://www.flyinfootwork.com/blog/2007/05/08/vintage-style-tips/
http://www.flyinfootwork.com/blog/2007/12/12/how-do-to-victory-rolls-in-5-min/

For men, you can find men’s vintage style wide leg pants at Adam’s Men’s Wear in the Seminole Town Center Mall. You can typically find wide leg pants in specialty menswear shops that carry more trendy/edgy men’s suits. You may have to sort through the bright colors to find the vintage look, but men’s dressy fashions haven’t changed that much over time. As for the 20’s/30’s style driving caps, fortunately those have made somewhat of  a comeback in recent years and you can find them at many stores like Burlington Coat Factory and occasionally even at Target.

For any woman who has yearned to do their hair in a sweet vintage style, this video clip tells you how. I have not yet tried the technique myself, but after doing battle with my hair on many an occasion, I can tell you that this should work pretty well. The lady in the video, as you will see, has somewhat short hair that does not look very thick and she is able to make it work quite quickly.

What I love about this technique is it does most of the hard hair work in one fell swoop and just some clean up pinning is required from there. The lady does not go into detail at all about how to roll your hair and it does not appear to me that she rolled her hair before showing the technique. If you have time and want to play with rolling your hair to get more body, that’s always helpful in doing vintage rolls… especially for those of us that have thick, heavy hair or a lot of hair.

What I have done before when I need to do a quick vintage ‘do is just spray the heck out of the areas of your hair that you are going to style and that will add some body and stylability to it. Don’t spray it so much that it’s stiff or unbrushable per se, just has some “grit” to it. “Dirty” hair or hair that has any styling product in it is much easier to style quickly than clean hair is. Between this and the technique that this lady shows you, anyone can do a vintage do in mere minutes

Happy styling and thanks Shelley for sending me the link to this clip!

The last surviving member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack, Joey Bishop, died today (10/18/07) at age 89 (news link).

Joey, a veteran of vaudeville, burlesque and nightclubs, is most remembered for his comedic one liners in the famous Rat Pack comedy and music numbers at the Sands Hotel. He is also well known from appearing in such moves as “Sergeants 3″ and the original “Ocean’s Eleven”.

“When Sinatra almost drowned filming a movie scene in Hawaii, Bishop wired him: ‘I thought you could walk on water.’”

“The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face.” - Joey Bishop

Mike Feher wrote us to tell us that PBS is running a special on the zoot suit riots that happened in Los Angeles in the early 1940’s. The PBS web site has a really good online presentation about the “zoot culture”. I think this is an area of history that is greatly misunderstood in the mainstream today. Mention the term nowadays and most people conjure up stereotyped images of swing dancing. In reality, there is a lot more to it than that and the suit stood for much more. Some zoot suiters danced, some didn’t. Some jitterbugs wore zoots (or more toned-down spin-off styles), and some didn’t. The web site has some interesting interviews with former zoot suiters about the love of big band music, dancing, and nightlife. It even has a short bit on the zoot suiters own spin on the jitterbug… the “pachuco hop”.

Thanks for the link Mike!

If you were in Orlando in the early 1940’s and wanted to dance to the big band sounds, the place to go was The Esplanade. This outdoor venue was located at the Army Air Force Base (which later became the Naval Training Center and is now Baldwin Park). The Thursday night “wolf dance” occasionally featured known acts such as Bob Hope and Sammy Kaye. From what we understand, the concrete dance floor (originally painted with Air Force symbols, and later repainted to reflect Navy ownership) still exists today.

Who says dancing is something you do above water? Check out the Orlando Sentinel’s special section on Weeki Wachee. Awesome! I grew up near the roadside attraction and use to spend hot summer days swimming at Bucaneer Bay. Definitely a cool bit of history worth saving!

Singer and star of Hollywood musicals, Betty Hutton, died today at the age of 86. (News Article) For those of you who were out Saturday, I played her version of “Stuff Like That There” (by request from Adam). If you have been dancing a while, you have probably also heard her songs on a number of occasions. Titles like “Murder, He Says”, “Orange Colored Sky”, “Doctor, Lawyer Indian Chief”, and “It’s Oh So Quiet” are all played from time to time. She will be remembered for her distinctive voice with tons of energy!