So I stumbled across these photos in the Google Life archives and it was pretty obvious within a nano-second that I needed to share these vintage 1950s photos with you gals! I love what all of these women are wearing (cute tomboy inspired styles) while they get their hands dirty.

Lots more photos of this set from Google Life Archives.

Photographer Nina Leen never fails to make me feel all sorts of nostalgic for fashion eras gone by. She has such a way of capturing every day moments in a fashion photography light. These photos titled "Fashion in St. Louis" are from the 1944 and really depicts wonderful every day fashion from the 40s.

I really have no idea what is going on in these photos. My assumption is it's a fashion class? Maybe some kind of "how to be the best you can be" program? What do you think?

All images are from the LIFE Archives and you can see more by searching "Fashion in St. Louis"

These vintage photographs from 1949 of life on campus at Smith College, a women's private liberal arts college in Northhampton, MA, remind me so much of the movie Mona Lisa Smile with Julia Roberts. Remember that movie?

I love how photographer Patrick Stackpole captured every day campus life of these women. And of course I enjoy looking at their clothes! Love those chambray and denim shirts, the little cardigans with brooches, and all those saddle shoes! I used to wear my fair share of vintage cardigans, but I sort of got over it. Well, for now anyway.








One thing I notice about this vintage photograph and their coats are the large size of the coats! Sometimes I forget that intentionally women just wore these big boxy coats in the early 50s. Sometimes I come across vintage coats and think "how are coats SO HUGE and dresses so small?!" It was just the style I guess!

img source: Google Image Archives by LIFE

I absolutely LOVE, LOVE the vintage photo archives by LIFE Magazine! It is such an amazing source for vintage fashion inspiration of really wonderful photographers that are not well known.

Here are some fantastic vintage 1950s beach fashion photos photographed by Loomis Dean. All images are from Life Photo Archives hosted on Google. If you search "BEACH 1950s" you'll find a lot more photos from this series, but these were my favorite!

She specialized in photographing ordinary people going about their ordinary lives. When she was a senior in high school, the first issue of LIFE magazine hit the newsstands and photographs depicting The Great Depression developed her passion in photo journalism. Esther Bubley was born in Wisconsin in 1921.


In 1951 she started freelancing for LIFE magazine and was one of the first women to successfully support herself as a photographer! Isn't that rad? To be inspired by something as a teen and then actually be living it within a couple decades, very cool.



Read more about photographer Esther Bubley on wikipedia. Images are sourced from MuseumSyndicate.com