I've written before (here and here) about nostalgia that people in the 1930s had for the Victorian era, and the view that many people have today of the 1950s is based in similar phenomena.

1950s nostalgia started, as best we can put a date on it, in about 1969 with the appearance of novelty band Sha Na Na at Woodstock; the musical Grease was created very soon after, premiering in Chicago in 1971, and Happy Days started on TV in 1974. Garry Marshall, the creator of Happy Days, had been in his early adulthood in the 1950s; Jim Jacobs, creator of Grease, had been in his teens; the first members of Sha Na Na had been children. For most affluent white people, memories from a distance of the world during childhood, adolescence, or young adulthood have a rosy tinge: this is when life was easy and people were safe. In recreating this softened version of the past for other adults, they created it for younger people who were born after it. What comes to mind when you think of the decade - soda shops, nuclear families with a stay-at-home mom, a commercial rock'n'roll-based counterculture, and necking in a car at a drive-in? Or record numbers of teen births, the Korean War, segregation and racial violence, and polio?

As with the Victorian -> 20th century shift, there are concrete aesthetic changes that help to solidify the idea of the 1950s as an idyllic and beautiful Before-Time in contrast to the late 1960s. More casual clothing was worn more frequently. Popular music became wilder and more experimental. People had to actually acknowledge anti-racist and feminist protests and complaints. More middle-class women were taking jobs. Kennedy assassinations. Et cetera. The clothing is really the key point when it comes to the 1950s as "the last decade of style and elegance" - for both men and women, and we could argue children as well. Women's clothing shifted from the fitted bodice (worn over undergarments that supported the bust and narrowed the waist and stomach) and the graceful full skirt or sexy pencil skirt to an A-line silhouette in the 1960s, then to counterculture-influenced styles with minimal bras and no girdles. Men stopped wearing hats as a matter of course, and wore suits far less often. (Is it any surprise that the major vintage-lifestyle forum is called The Fedora Lounge? And that the Hats subforum dwarfs the others on men's clothing in terms of number of threads and comments? All of the other subforums, now that I look at it.) Children were less dressed-up, and teenage fashion, particularly for girls, took on a flavor that was more distinct from adult female dress. Stockings worn on garter belts were wholly replaced with pantyhose, and then bare legs became common. All of these were fairly major transitions from traditional norms, and none of these changes in clothing culture have reverted - if anything, they've become entrenched as "the way things naturally are", and you sometimes have to fight to get people to believe that, for instance, no, really, foundation garments weren't seen as hellish.