Page 22 – LIFE

Ain’t No Party Like a Statehood Party: When Alaska Joined the Union

March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 by Bill Syken

America’s purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million in 1867 was regarded as such a bad idea at the time that people referred to it as Seward’s Folly, named after Secretary of State William H. Seward, who negotiated the deal with Russia.

But Alaska’s abundant resources and also its strategic value during World War II (see LIFE’s story on the Aleutian campaign) helped ease its journey from territory to full-blown statehood, which the U.S. Congress approved on July 7, 1958.

While statehood would not become official for Alaska until President Dwight D Eisenhower signed the paperwork on Jan. 3, 1959, the congressional vote was enough to set off celebrations. Here’s how LIFE described the scene in its July 14, 1958 issue, in a story headlined “A Jubilant Land of Promise: Alaska Makes It As a State”:

The whooping and hollering around a huge bonfire in Anchorage and the ear-splitting smiles in the Capitol in Washington were set off by the same fine news: Congress had approved statehood for Alaska. The battle, first begun in 1916 and marked by disheartening defeats through the years, was over. From Umnat to Umnak sirens screamed, toasts were drunk and there was wild jubilation….Alaskan statehood, said Texas congressman Jim Wright, “proves there is still something dynamic and attractive and growing in the American experiment in free government.”

The pictures from LIFE photographer Dmitri Kessel capture the jubilation in the 49th state, where headlines declared “We’re In” with the biggest typeface possible. In Anchorage residents danced, built a massive bonfire and raced around it on horseback. They unfurled an American flag big enough to cover a downtown building and affixed to it an oversized 49th star. Alaska’s status as the largest state in the union was proclaimed with a sign hung on a moose during a downtown parade.

In its coverage LIFE dubbed Alaska “The Last Great U.S. Frontier” and all these years later the state, with its challenging climate, abundant wildlife and vast expanses of undeveloped land, retains that character. In 1957 a mere 231,000 people occupied Alaska’s 665,400 square miles, and today the state’s population remains a relatively sparse 733, 583. Perhaps that it why it has been a magnet for reality shows and occupies a unique place in the American landscape. While being part of the union, it also remains a world apart.

Alaska statehood celebration, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alaskans pinned the 49th star to the U.S. flag to celebrate the state’s acceptance into the union.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alaskans pinned a 49th star to the US flag to celebrate acceptance into the union, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alaska statehood celebration, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Alaska statehood celebration in Anchorage, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alaska statehood celebration, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

President Dwight D. Eisenhower (left) celebrated the news of Alaska’s being voted into the union with state governor Mike Stepovich (center) and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton, 1957.

Hank Walker/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alaska governor Mike Stepovich (right) and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton posed with submitted redesigns of the U.S. flag to reflect Alaska’s pending admittance to the union, 1957. Some flag designs included a 50th star in anticipation of Hawaii joining, which it would do in 1959.

Hank Walker/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Remarkable Species Known as KISS

April 4, 2023March 30, 2023 by Bill Syken

The following is excerpted from LIFE’s new special edition on KISS, available online and at newsstands:

Conversations about KISS tend to revolve around the band’s extraordinary appearance and extravagant showmanship. Their “sexified Kabuki makeup. [Their] black and silver warrior bondage gear and seven-inch platform heels,” as Tom Morello put it in his 2014 speech inducting KISS into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. At a live performance, Morello pointed out, you might experience, “the place blowing up with explosions, screeching with sirens . . . bare knuckled and bad ass.” KISS elevates off the stage on glowing platforms. Gene spits flames. Paul flies over the crowd. Comic book superheroes come to life. Rock and roll has rarely known such giddy gall.

Nearly from the start, those industry-lifting shows were so outsized, so audacious, that you didn’t even have to be there to feel them. The live albums—KISS Alive!, released in 1975, and KISS Alive II, released two years later—could set your house afire. Wait, was that the sound of a rocket ship going off? A race car?

I first heard Alive II several years after it came out. I’d just come home from school, and I was in my bedroom. I had a small plate of Chips Ahoy! cookies and a glass of milk on the bookcase.

Alive II is a double album. I slid the first record out of its sleeve, put it on the turntable, and set down the needle. Then I stepped back and took a cookie off the plate. I was 11 years old. I had heard about and seen images of KISS—they were on lunch boxes—but I had no idea what to expect.

First the crowd noise. Then: “You wanted the best, and you got the best! The hottest band in the world, KIIISSS!” That went straight into the Gatling-gun opening riff of “Detroit Rock City,” then the drumroll, the big one-two entry chords, and Ace Frehley’s massive guitar slide. My eyes went as wide as the record itself. I put my hand over my mouth and I closed the door to my room. Was it even safe to be listening to something like this? I suddenly had a secret: That this existed! That this was KISS! A brave new world with such creatures in it. I didn’t know if anyone else should find out.

Alive II (like Alive!, as I would later discover) felt completely unbound and joyous. Urgent. There’s the moment when Paul Stanley, unable to contain himself in announcing the song, belts into the crowd: “All right! ‘Love Gun!’ ” Or during “God of Thunder,” when the drum solo closes with three momentous gongs, sounding the tocsin as it were, and Paul yells, “Peter Criss on the drums!” and the verse picks up immediately with Gene, the God of Thunder himself, singing in his guttural snarl: “I’m the lord of the wastelands, a modern-day man of steel.” Comic book hero indeed. In producing their live albums, KISS went into the studio to overdub and rework the tracks for maximum effect—and that is precisely the effect they had.

For professional musicians the moment of being felled by KISS can be unambiguous. When I asked the guitarist Glenn Sherman why he loves KISS, he answered: “ ‘Deuce’: Listen to the F-chord played in the first chorus under the line ‘You know your man is working hard.’ The most perfect power chord I’ve ever heard.” Sherman is referring specifically to the version of ‘Deuce’ on Alive!, the first song on the album that changed everything for KISS, when the notion of their global success went from improbable to inevitable.

***

The Hall of Fame induction was criminally overdue. That’s almost certainly because in the glare of KISS’s style, the substance of the music itself—those driving, unadorned, scrappy, gorgeous songs upon which the entire priapic colossus of the band is built—gets overlooked. “Here’s a statement only a fool would contradict: There’s never been a band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame whose output has been critically contemplated less than the music of KISS,” Chuck Klosterman wrote in Grantland. “I’d guess 50 percent of the voters who put KISS on their Rock Hall ballot have not listened to any five KISS records more than five times; part of what makes the band so culturally durable is the assumption that you can know everything about their aesthetic without consuming any of it.”

KISS has produced 30 gold records, more than any American rock band ever. Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over, and Love Gun all went multiplatinum. KISS’s songs were what led record executives to bet on the band in the first place. (Early on, their distributor, Warner Bros., liked the music but wanted KISS to ditch the makeup.) Morello in his induction speech reeled off a list of about a dozen Grammy-Award winners who drew from KISS: Metallica, Lady Gaga, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters . . . on and on.

The 1994 album Kiss My Ass, a compilation of KISS songs covered by musicians who’ve openly declared a debt, includes recordings by Lenny Kravitz and Stevie Wonder, the American Symphony Orchestra, Yoshiki, Anthrax, and the Gin Blossoms. That Garth Brooks sings “Hard Luck Woman”—a KISS ballad with a cowboy swing—seemed the obvious fit for the country megastar, but it was not the song that Brooks initially had in mind. “It’s gotta be ‘Detroit Rock City,’ ” he said when asked what he wanted to play. (Alas, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones had claimed “Detroit” first.) Nirvana wasn’t on Kiss My Ass, but in 1989 they recorded a cover of KISS’s “Do You Love Me?”

Even now teenagers across the country—oblivious to KISS concepts of the Demon, the Starchild, the Spaceman, or the Cat—might bop around in their air pods singing “I Was Made For Lovin’ You,” the disco-era song reborn in TikTok compilations more than four decades after it broke as the lead single off KISS’s Dynasty album.

KISS wouldn’t have been the global force it became without the voluminous shtick. But the band wouldn’t have been anything at all, of course, without the music. If KISS’s principals were inspired by the Beatles, you can just as easily trace the band’s beginnings further back to the primordial soup of rock and roll, those fertile muddy waters that eventually enabled KISS to evolve into a species all its own. The hardest thing to do in rock and roll, in anything, is to be original. Fifty years after their debut album there has never been another band like KISS.

Here are some photos from LIFE’s new special edition on KISS:

Photography Ross Halfin

Members of the band KISS (from left to right: Ace Frehley, Peter Criss, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons) in 1975.

Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty

KISS on the town in New York City, 1976.

Richard Corkery/NY Daily News/Getty

Paul Stanley of KISS shredded on stage during a 1975 concert in Detroit.

Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty

KISS posed with members of the Cadillac (Mich.) High School football team, 1975.

Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty

Members of KISS (left to right: Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley and Paul Stanley) display their showmanship during a 1977 concert.

Michael Putland/Hulton/Getty

KISS drummer Peter Criss (left) and band manager Bill Aucoin were filmed for a 1977 NBC News report, “The Land of Hype and Glory.”

NBC NewsWire/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Members of the KISS Army fan club on the march in Australia before a performance by the band in Sydney, 1980.

Peter Morris/Fairfax Media/Getty

KISS in Munich, Germany, November 1983.

Fryderyk Gabowicz/picture alliance/Getty

Paul Stanley, Tommy Thayer and Gene Simmons of KISS live in Munich, 2008.

Denis O’Regan/Premium Archive/Getty

KISS being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, April 2014.

Larry Busacca/Getty

LIFE Goes to a Motorcyle Rally

March 23, 2023March 23, 2023 by Bill Syken

It calls itself as “the world’s oldest motorcycle rally,” and in June 2023 the town of Laconia, New Hampshire will host the 100th edition of its Motorcyle Week.

In 1947 LIFE sent photographer Sam Shere to chronicle an early but already bustling version of the gathering, and the magazine’s story in its Aug. 11, 1947 issue was inspired in part by the growth of cycling as a social activity in the years following World War II. “Today’s 200,000 “bike” riders are organized like so many Panzer units into well-disciplined clubs with costumes,” LIFE wrote. “…To these stalwarts the motorcycle is a white charger, an emblem of knighthood. The gas fumes, the roaring wind, and the staccato snorting of the exhaust enchant them.”

Shere’s photos capture the joyful juxtaposition of leather-clad bikers converging on a quaint New England setting. But the images that stand out most feature cyclists from the Motor Maids of America. The group, dedicated to bringing female motorcyclists together, began in 1940 with a few dozen riders and today boasts a membership of about 1,300. The photos from the Laconia rally include shots of the group’s founder, Dot Robinson, with her 15-year-old-daughter Betty. Their Motor Maids uniforms are both jaunty and a tad formal. They make the Motor Maids look like meter maids gone rogue.

They also help the Laconia rally look like a rollicking good time.

A motorcyle rally in Laconia, New Hampshire, July 1947.

Sam Shere/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motorcycle rally, Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motorcycle rally Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dot Robinson (right), founder of the Motor Maids of America, and her daughter Betty, 15, at a motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dot Robinson (leftt), founder of the Motor Maids of America, and her daughter Betty, 15, at a motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motorcycle rally, Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motorcycle rally, Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At a motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H. in 1947, some riders wore personalized protective leather belts.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At a motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H. in 1947, some riders wore personalized protective leather belts.

Sam Shere/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At a motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H. in 1947, some riders wore personalized protective leather belts.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motorcycle rally, Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A race at the annual motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Following His Own Tune

March 20, 2023March 20, 2023 by Bill Syken

It says something about the scale of the accomplishments of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar that, more than 30 years after he retired from playing basketball, he remains a regular presence in the public sphere.

In February 2023 the six-time NBA MVP and six-time NBA champion graciously handed a ceremonial basketball to Lebron James to commemorate James breaking Abdul-Jabbar’s NBA all-time scoring record, which had stood since 1984. Abdul-Jabbar was also a central character in the HBO series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty that debuted in 2022 and has been renewed for a second season (and which Abdul-Jabbar, like many other former Lakers, has criticized for its inaccuracy). Abdul-Jabbar has also gained notice an author and also as an opinion writer, expressing his insights on race and other societal issues.

It was evident that he was not a typical athlete when LIFE profiled Abdul-Jabbar in its Feb. 17, 1967 issue. At that point he was 19 years old and a sophomore at UCLA, and he was still known by his birth name of Lew Alcindor (he would change it after converting to Islam in 1968). This was also before he began wearing his familiar goggles on the court, a protective measure he took after suffering a scratched cornea. It was also before he would lead UCLA to three NCAA championships and a record 71 consecutive wins.

The mood of the LIFE profile is captured by a quote from the young star, “The world wasn’t made for people over six foot two.” (The story gives his height as 7’1 3/8″, though the NBA lists it as 7’2″). The story presents him as a loner who values his privacy and is not at all comfortable with the spotlight. The photos by Bill Ray show a basketball star who, in the course of trying to live an ordinary life, can’t help but stand out because of his size. Abdul-Jabbar towers over his then-girlfriend as they walk around campus. His visit to a music store has the feel of a scene from Gulliver’s Travels. “I wish I could become a musician,” Abdul-Jabbar told LIFE. “That’s the one thing in the world that I would really enjoy.”

Perhaps the most eye-grabbing of Ray’s photos show Abdul-Jabbar shopping for clothing, and getting measured for a pair of dress pants (length: 51 inches). The tailor—who, it must be noted in fairness, seems to have been on the shorter side—needed to stand on a chair to get the Abdul-Jabbar’s measurements. The shop manager quipped to LIFE, “The only pants longer than these are for a redwood tree.”

It’s the kind of not-very-witty joke the cerebral basketball great must have heard a thousand times in his life, and it gives a sense of why, at such a young age, he was already cherishing his privacy.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, UCLA sophomore, 1967.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar gets measured for a pair of dress pants, 1967.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar gets fitted for a pair of pants, 1967.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a Los Angeles music shop, 1967.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with then-girlfriend Jeri Haywood, a fellow UCLA sophomore, in 1967.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at UCLA in 1967 with then-girlfriend Jeri Haywood, a fellow sophomore.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in action as a UCLA sophomore, 1967.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (No. 33) in action as a UCLA sophomore, 1967.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a UCLA sophomore, 1967.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in action as a UCLA sophomore, 1967.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Before There Was #VanLife, There Was Trailer Mania

March 17, 2023March 17, 2023 by Bill Syken

The cover story of the Aug. 14, 1970 issue of LIFE magazine highlighted the “Summer Nomads” who hit the road in the latest and greatest recreational vehicles.

The phenomenon was burgeoning then, but it was not new. The history of the RV dates back to 1915, when the Conklin family retrofitted a bus by installing four beds and traveled the country in it. That started a craze which has continued and recently took new form with the #vanlife craze that flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic.

LIFE’s story, titled “Home, Home on the Road,” talked about how travelers in 1970 were flooding America’s national parks, and one big reason for this was the success of the recreational vehicle.

Part of the crush [at national parks] comes from the recent popularity of house trailers, truck-mounted “campers” and van-like motor homes, which can simply be wheeled into place at a campsite. There are more than 2.5 million of these, some of them elegantly furnished, with double beds, television and air conditioning, and many owners freely admit they aren’t nearly so interested in the great outdoors as they are in camaraderie of their fellow wheeled nomads.

The photos by Ralph Crane captured the great variety of mobile homes of that era. The star of the story was the Airstream, a trailer with a distinctive rounded aluminum body that had been around since 1936. Crane chronicled an annual gathering of Airstream devotees in Hershey, Pa., and also group of Airstream users who met in Great Falls, Mont., in advance of taking a group trek through Canada and up to Alaska. The Airstream remains popular today as do the gatherings: the big 2023 rally is slated for Rock Springs, Wyoming.

The story also surveyed other recreational vehicles, noting that what LIFE called “self-contained motor homes” such as the Winnebago were the fastest growing sector of the market.

And the essay included a tricked out van that is a forebear of the sort of vehicles that gained in popularity during the COVID pandemic age as #vanlife become a hot hashtag and more people pursued the dream of living a nomadic life.

Look through these pictures by Ralph Crane, and you’ll see people who used trailers find not just mobility but also community at the same time that they were getting away from it all.

Airstream trailers converged on a campground for a rally in Hershey, Pa., 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene from a gathering of Airstream uses in Hershey, Pa., 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

George Grening and his wife (right) at an Airstream trailer rally, 1970; they brought their motorcycle along for quick side excursions.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bob Newcomb and his family posed in front of their trailer at an Airstream convention in Hershey, Pa., 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bob Newcomb with a 16-month-old in his trailer, 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Attendees at a trailer rally, 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene from an Airstream trailer rally, 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

About 10,000 trailer fans converged on Hershey, Pa. for an annual gathering, 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Aerial view of an annual gathering of Airstream travelers in Hershey, Pa., 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Attendees at a trailer rally, 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A group of Airstream travelers gathered in Great Falls, Montana before heading out on a trek across Canada and Alaska, 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This model of trailer was 25 feet long and capable of sleeping up to 11 people, depending on the layout plan. Its cost in 1970 was $5,400.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From a 1970 LIFE story on the burgeoning popularity of trailer travel.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This wheeled bed by Wheel Mate was designed to be towed by motorcycle or small car. It came with a mattress and folding frame top and cost $480 in 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The tent trailer, described by LIFE in 1970 as a common starter mobile home, cost between $300 and $2,000. The tent collapsed into the trailer for towing, and one model included a pullout kitchen.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This Gypsy Mini-Home was a 1970 example of a converted van; they sold for between $3,000 and $7,000 and included beds for up to five people.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This amphibious unit could slip off its trailer and become a houseboat; it featured wall-to-wall carpeting and cost $10,800 in 1970.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Self-contained motor homes like this one were in 1970 the fastest-growing category of recreational vehicle; this couple played cards in a 36-foot Winnebago that cost $8,500.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From a 1970 story on the burgeoning popularity of trailer life.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Skirted Subjects: Classic Images from LIFE

March 14, 2023March 14, 2023 by Bill Syken

When talking about skirts, the most obvious point of discussion is their length. This collection of LIFE skirt photographs certainly runs the gamut, from antebellum-style hoop skirts to the thigh-baring minis that made a splash in the later years of the magazine’s original run.

But in addition to revealing a little (or a lot of) leg, these photos of skirts also show something else. They highlight the many different approaches that great photographers can take to a subject.

For instance, the pictures of John Dominis and Carlo Bavagnoli in this collection take a documentary approach to fashion, showing skirt-wearing women as they moved about the world. Then there was Gjon Mili, a master technician who brought models into his studio, where his use of strobe lighting created images that are as striking as they are distinctive.

Then there are photographers such as Nina Leen and Gordon Parks, who took an approach that is somewhere between the two, placing their models out in the world but crafting images that are as stylish as the clothing trends they sought to illustrate.

See for yourself. Like the skirts themselves, the variation adds to the fascination.

Circle skirts, 1950.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine’s original caption: “Surrounded by a skirt full of her own pretty face, model Norma Richter shows off dress made especially to demonstrate photographic fabrics.”

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A French model showed a small print dress with triple-flounced skirt and long sleeves by designer Jacques Fath, Paris 1951.

Gordon Parks/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Fashion, 1951.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A polka dotted smock top over black skirt by Balenciaga, Paris, 1951.

Gordon Parks/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Model showing skirt featuring three-tiers of ruffles, 1951.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photo from a story on Big Ten college fashions, Bloomington, Indiana, 1954.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The new skirts of 1947.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Space fashions rushed onto the market in 1957 included skirts, jackets, hats, and balloons with a satellite motif.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Kansas high school student wore a mini skirt, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In 1950 career girl hostess Joan Wilson wore a cotton circle skirt that retailed for $17.95.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Skirt fashions, 1938.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The New York Look, 1969.

Vernon Merritt III/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From a story on summer beach fashions, 1950.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fashion shoot, 1946.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C., April 1947.

Martha Holmes/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From an April 20, 1942, LIFE story about proper skirt-hem lengths.

Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In Columbus, Missiissippi, coffee was served on porch of ante-bellum mansion, Riverview, by young ladies wearing hoop skirts at a party for cadets from the local Army flying school, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cotton skirt, New York City, 1941.

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Model Dorian Leigh showed off the accordion pleats of a straight-hanging sheer dress (Jane Derby, $250) which could swirl into a ten-yard circle of flesh-colored chiffon, 1950.

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A double image from a story on college fashions, 1948.

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Employees of Saks Fifth Avenue watching a fashion show promoting midi-length skirts, 1970.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actor Rock Hudson (center) sitting on MGM lot with eight midi-skirted starlets who play opposite him in the Roger Vadim-directed film Pretty Maids All In a Row.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shuttetstock

A women in a miniskirt considered the midi-skirt look, 1970.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Short skirts hit London, 1966

Carlo Bavagnoli/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Short skirts hit the street of London, 1966

Carlo Bavagnoli/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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Before There Was #VanLife, There Was Trailer Mania

Skirted Subjects: Classic Images from LIFE

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