Review

Well, before Jackie there was "Mamie? Yes, Marling puts forth a new perspective on Mamie Eisenhower as an important figure in the rising post-war world of fashion. The first lady donned Christian Dior's "New Look" "as coined by Life magazine "a style that embodied a "molded, hourglass shape" with its fitted bodice and long skirt. Bored of the drab, asexual looking suits attributed to an era of rationing fabric, many women enjoyed this post-war design that embodied youthfulness, centered on color and form, and, most importantly, displayed their womanliness. Furthermore, female expertise in regards to fashion opened up new avenues of professionalism for women "the dress salon became a place where women's professional competence was unquestioned. .
             As Marling admits, however, not all Americans bought into the "New Look." Some women viewed the style as physically oppressive, wasteful, unwholesome or too sexy, while others simply favored higher hemlines over Dior's long skirt (16). The youth culture especially rejected the look, rarely wearing hats and vying instead for the "chemise" or "sack dress." Fashion is one of the few areas where Marling's book depicts the "growing generational divide" of the 1950s, and the "sack dress" was at the center of that divide (41). Even so, the "sack dress" became more than a mass consumer product or a symbol of youth culture "it also served foreign policy purposes as a Cold War symbol of democracy and freedom. "Moderately priced fashions" on display at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair "stood for American classlessness and freedom of choice" (46). Mamie Eisenhower also used her "New Look" hats as instruments of foreign policy, bestowing them upon such international figures as Queen Elizabeth!.
             and Nina Khrushchev "the later of whom would never wear "such a blatant emblem of capitalist excess in public" (32). .
             The combination of a forty-hour workweek, vacations, early retirement and paid holidays provided Americans with leisure time for their families and for personal endeavors.