How Retro.com

LOUD, RUDE AND STRANGELY LIKEABLE Mary Hardy with co-worker, Graham Kennedy.  Image from "The  Age" newspaper. Eccentric, vibrant and a tad acerbic, sister of writer Frank Hardy and Gre...

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AN AMERICAN BABE 1940s beauty, Gene Tierney 1940s leading lady, Gene Tierney, was a Brooklyn-born beauty who wowed screen audiences with her striking features - luminous green eyes, a bone...

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Mary Pickford - an ingenue of  silent films WHAT IS AN INGENUE? An ingenue is an innocent; a guileless girl-woman who has charm, physical appeal and general niceness but is unsullied by t...

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17th century engraving of a British actor, in character as 'Lord Foppington'. Source: Wiki Commons WHAT DOES FOP MEAN? The word 'fop' was used way back in the 1600s as a pejorative t...

http://www.howretro.com/2013/07/fop-hairstyles_27.html

When you're hot, you're hot and in the 1960s there was no-one more sizzling than these female movie stars... The social revolution of the 1960s and its accompanying shifts in perspective broug...

http://www.howretro.com/2013/07/top-actresses-of-1960s.html

THE WOOD LOOK What goes around comes around in the fashion industry and that's certainly true of sunglasses, the designers of which often look to the past for inspiration, as evidenced by the...

http://www.howretro.com/2013/06/wooden-framed-sunglasses.html

"The term "chandelier" is from the 12th Century Old French world Chandelier, which evolved from an earlier, 10th century term chandelabre. That's not the end of the story though, because chan...

http://www.howretro.com/2013/06/decorating-with-chandeliers.html

It was the master chefs of the 1920's who helped direct the development of Molteni stoves, a brand name synonymous with high quality, prestigious and expensiveprofessional stoves and rangehoods...

http://www.howretro.com/2013/06/top-of-range-molteni-stoves.html

HISTORY OF THE CHESTERFIELD SOFA Apparently many Canadians refer to any sofa as a Chesterfield but this is news to me as I've always associated the name with a particular type of classic, lar...

http://www.howretro.com/2013/06/chesterfield-couches.html

SHOCKING SCHIAPARELLI Elsa Schiaparelli was one of Coco Chanel's biggest rivals. In the Paris scene of the 1930s, the Italian born Schiaparelli personified cultivated chic and was a style lea...

http://www.howretro.com/2013/06/elsa-schiaparelli-shocking.html

THE STYLE KING Easily one of the most recognizable figures in fashion history, by the end of his life, Algerian born Yves Saint Laurent had managed to make his name synonymous with elegant sty...

http://www.howretro.com/2013/06/yves-saint-laurent-style.html

WARHOL'S SOUP FACTORY Artist Andy Warhol once remarked in his non-chalant fashion, "art is about liking things". Well Warhol must have been very fond of Campell's soup cans because he painted...

http://www.howretro.com/2013/06/andy-warhols-soup-cans.html

Batik is an Indonesian word and refers to a particular method of dying cloth known as 'resist dying', whereby part of the cloth is deliberately prevented from absorbing colour dyes. Instead of ...

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Smeg is an innovative, Italian based company specialsing in high quality home appliances for the trendy, moneyed set. Their vintage designs are reminiscent of the 1950's and 60's yet incorporat...

http://www.howretro.com/2013/05/the-coolness-of-smeg-fridges.html

WHAT'S A BUZZWORD? Good question. A buzzword is a word that has become so fashionable and over-used, it's almost a slogan. Often such words begin as pop-psychology jargon in the corporate, me...

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MARILYN MONROE LIPS - 24x36 - ART PRINT / POSTER Collections Poster Print, 24x36 Collections Poster Print, 24x36 AMAZON PRICE: $2.89 List Price: $6.99 PHOTOGENIC Marilyn Monro...

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Once a back up guitarist for the legendary Sam Cooke, BOBBY WOMACK began his career back in the 1960's, singing in the family R&B band, The Valentinos. Based in Cleveland where Womack was bor...

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THE GABORS FLEE EUROPE World War 2 created flux and turmoil in Europe. It was a time of change and disorder; families were uprooted, homelands abandoned and for some, a chance for new beginni...

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DIPLOMACY The other evening I was wandering aimlessly through the games section of Amazon, as is my want, when I came across a product that stirred a strange little memory - partly warm and f...

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Doris Day -1954 covergirl FRESH AS A DAISY AND CLEAN AS A WHISTLE soft and romantic...a very young Doris Day I confess, in my callow youth I was critical of Doris Day - her appearanc...

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Hayley Mills: a golden glow HAYLEY MILLS made her acting debut at the age of thirteen, when she appeared in the 1959 film Tiger Bay,with her famous actor father, John MIlls and which she w...

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THE SLOW (AND PAINFUL) DEATH OF THE STICK-SHIFT? Once upon a time all cars were manuals and although strictly speaking, the first auto transmission was invented by a Canadian in 1921 (a compress...

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Edith Head. Image from Broadway World Legendary Hollywood costume designer Edith Head received more Academy Award nominations (35 in all) than any other women in Hollywood and won eight of...

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CUTESY + Saw this 1953 image on Etsy whilst browsing vintage patterns and found it fairly irresistable How cute can a stuffed dog get? The pattern is downloadable here as a PDF file for aroun...

http://www.howretro.com/2013/02/vintage-soft-toy-pattern.html

Young Yoko...Image from "Yokos Blog" In the chunky annals of celebrity romance, few relationships have provoked as much controversy as that between John Lennon and Yoko Ono. They famously me...

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