Prelude to Fame: Costuming--Casual Home Styles


Figure 1.-- Here Guido is wearing his play clothes. He is going over to the home where his new English friend is staying. He is wearing a collared shirt, short pants, white anklets, and twin bar strap shoes.

There are two boys involved in 'Prelude to Fame'. A poor Italian boy, Guido, is the main character. The film opens with an English boy, Nick, wearing contemporary English clothing. His Italian friend, Guido, wears contemprary Italian clothes. His new English friend wears standard English outfits worn by a boy from a family in comfortable circumstances. The main character, Guido, is a poor Italian boy and wearing rather ragged clothing. These are his play-clothes for the first half of the film. His clothes are not ragged, but they are very worn. They look to be serviceable, but not fancy play clothes. . He wears a collared shirt, short pants with a hole, white ankle socks and twin strap shoes. The shorts have big hole in one leg. Poor boys commonly wore 'T'-shirts or singlerts rather than collared shirts for play. We are not sure what color the strap shoes are. Many poor Italian boys went barefoot. A poor surely boy would not have worn strap shoes like these seen here (figure 1). They look more like shoes worn by boys from affluent families. Both English and Italian boys at the time commonly wore short pants. An interesting destinction between Italy and Britain are white socks. They were mostly a girl's style in England, but some younger boys did wear them.

Guido

A poor Italian boy, Guido, is the main character of the film. Guido, wears contemprary Italian clothes. His new English friend wears standard English outfits worn by a boy from a family in comfortable circumstances. The main character, Guido, is a poor Italian boy and wearing rather ragged clothing. These are his play-clothes for the first half of the film. His clothes are not ragged, but they are very worn. They look to be serviceable, but not fancy play clothes. He wears a collared shirt, short pants with a hole, white ankle socks and twin strap shoes. The shorts have big hole in one leg. Poor boys commonly wore 'T'-shirts or singlerts rather than collared shirts for play. We are not sure what color the strap shoes are. Many poor Italian boys went barefoot. A poor surely boy would not have worn strap shoes like these seen here (figure 1). They look more like shoes worn by boys from affluent families. Both English and Italian boys at the time commonly wore short pants. An interesting destinction between Italy and Britain are white socks. They were mostly a girl's style in England, but some younger boys did wear them.

Nick

The film opens with an English boy, Nick, wearing contemporary English clothing. Nick wears a short pants suit, long socks (a British term for knee socks), white shirt, and leather shoes. Nick usually dresses formally throughout the portion of the film in which he appears. The exception is the beginning of the film when he is playing bandits with Guido. Here he wears a collared shirt, short pants, a belt, socks, and leager shoes. We are not sure if he is wearing knee socks that have come down or abkle socks. These are not really play clothes. We wonder if Nick had only clothes. It look like he has just taken off his tie and suit jacket. Notice he is still wearing leather shoes rather than sneakers. In other scenes he is wearing his suit jacket and tie. The bandits scene is as close as Nick gets to wearing casual clothes. That is interesting. British boys from less well-to-do famililes commonly used an old suit as casual wear. But nick comes from a well-to-do family which could easily aford to purchase casual as well as dress up clothing. This was all beginning to change in 1950. Clothing was more expensive (in terms of a percentage of personal income) before World War II than after the War. We see more and more boyswearing casual clotyhes as the 1950s progressed.












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Created: 10:13 PM 5/21/2013
Last updated: 8:47 PM 5/23/2013