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Rockabilly Renaissance
by Webjockey Fashionboyz
Check out Fashionboyz' Rifflist: Rockabilly Renaissance
The Rockabilly look sported by today's Teddy Boys and Betty Babes is one of the hottest trends for fall. Based on the signature, throwback aesthetic of the tough side of the 1950's (Think James Dean), the feel is iconic, irreverent and just the right mixture of sweet and vicious.
Rockabilly was the first rock 'n' roll style to be performed primarily by white musicians, sparking a cultural revolution that is still strong today. Its attitude combines rebellion, sexuality, and freedom-a sneering expression of disdain for the workaday world of parents and authority figures.
The pioneering band the Stray Cats set the tone for the Rockabilly look. Core to the fashion are greased pompadours, long sideburns, tight jeans, creeper shoes, and a penchant for leopard-skin accents. American fans have also appropriated bowling, gas station and cowboy shirts, as well as the all important leather motorcycle jacket.
The motorcycle jacket stems from the rockers, for whom the jacket was fashionable and functional. The rockers were as notorious for being Café Racers as for their love of rockabilly music. They gathered in places such as London's Ace Cafe, where they would place bets on a table for a quick race. These races involved running out and mounting their hopped-up motorcycles and racing them around a short predetermined course of roads, circling back to park, and getting back to the table before a selected rockabilly song finished playing on the jukebox. The rockers' dangerous antics and attitude was perhaps the greatest influence to the lasting romance, symbolism, image, and overall fashion that has immortalized rockabilly. Although nearly all of the motorcycle operators were male, there were plenty of girls involved in the image who rode on back of the bikes.
Women's Rockabilly fashion favors the hard-edge and glamorous side of the 50's, as well as a nod to pin-up girls. Their look includes glamorous 1950s dresses, often with crinolines, as well as animal prints, horn-rimmed glasses, fishnets, tight jeans, capris, or short shorts. As with the men, tattoos are popular, and they are even sometimes images of pin-ups.
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