Looking retro can be quite easy. Just the simple, small touches to your appearance can make a big difference. Here are 10 tips for ladies to look retro, easy enough to incorporate every day.
1. Wear vintage or vintage-style jewelry. A strand of chunky beads, a 1950s cuff-style bracelet, and especially larger post earrings really help with a vintage look. Plus, it's easy to pick them up at yardsales and thrift stores for very little outlay. Modern jewelry can work too. Look for vibrant colors, enamel, bead clusters, rhinestones, long bead necklaces, and especially nice looking faux pearls of all types.
2. When wearing a shirt with a plain neckline, wear a collar with it. You can pick up vintage fabric or crocheted collars, make your own, or knot a scarf around your neck. A white collar instantly steps up the shirt a class and adds the well-groomed look so necessary to retro styles.
3. Do your hair in some sort of face-framing style. If you don't have time to experiment with victory rolls or pin curls, do something simple like twisting the front section above each ear and securing it with bobby pins or by placing a comb behind the section and push it towards the top of your head to puff. It makes a big difference from pulling your hair back straight, for instance. Now you can do a ponytail or plain bun with your back hair and still look stylish.
4. Make sure your shoes and handbag are the same color when you go out of the house. Also gloves, if you wear them, although hats can be other colors. Ladies of past generations were extremely particular about such things, and it creates the put-together look desirable for a retro influence.
5. Choose clothes with vintage-style prints and feminine elements. Vibrant colors, large prints, polka dots, stripes, paisleys - all these are easy to find even off the rack. Incorporate turquoise, reds, muted sky blues, and tangerine in your outfit, even if it's just a touch like a turquoise scarf around the waist of a white blouse. Choose blouses with rounded collars instead of shirt collars; skirts with flares or gathered waists.
6. Carry satchel-type handbags instead of slouchy or shoulder style. Clutches are also perfect. Of course, actual vintage purses are usually easy to find from embroidered straw with bamboo handles for casual, to the 1940s clamshell-shutting velvet clutch for dress occasions.
7. Wear hats. Keep a few non-ostentatious vintage hats to wear while shopping, or even a quick run to the post office. Berets are perfect and will go with even modern outfits since they are still in style. They are easy to make, too.
8. Buy several colors of large vintage brooches. They can be rhinestone, enamel, whatever. But they are so handy to pin to coat or jacket lapels, on hats or scarves, use as a buckle for a scarf wrapped around your waist...the list is endless. Very popular during the 1950s, they add another subtle touch of glamour or splash of color that creates the retro look.
9. Wear heels when you can, and buy shoes that have a feminine touch to them. Buckles or bows on the toe, stitching or eyelet elements...Especially 1940s shoes had that special touch that makes them distinctive. If you have a plain pair of shoes (heels or not), make or buy shoe clips (tutorial coming soon) to wear with them.
10. Purchase alligator clip flowers (usually inexpensive at craft stores) and use them not only in your hair, but clip on a sweater lapel, purse handle, skirt waist, or on your shoulder as a corsage.
But these 10 tips are just basics! Once you have an eye for the style you like, it's easy to spot things that are or can be made into the retro look. Be creative, and have fun!
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