This Fresh Eggs-Head Actually Won First Prize in an Easter Egg-Head Competition in 1980

You can’t talk about the 1980s without discussing bold fashion risks. With blown fresh eggs, this 21 year old director won first prize as a Easter Egg-head – what a cracking idea in 1980. The photo was taken by U.K. photographer Dennis Hutchinson.

The photograph captures a very 1980s-style creative moment—likely intended to blend fashion, humor, and a bit of seasonal fun. The model’s hair is styled using real or faux eggs, cleverly tied in as curlers, highlighting both whimsy and creativity. It’s a playful nod to beauty rituals, reimagined with a festive Easter twist.

It’s a classic example of the kind of offbeat competitions and eccentric styles that thrived during that era, particularly in the U.K., where tongue-in-cheek fashion statements were often embraced with pride.

The Easter Bonnets From the Victorian Era

Easter is the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, and traditionally, people wore new clothes to church as a symbol of spiritual renewal. The Easter bonnet became a visible sign of this renewal, especially for women and girls, who often wore a new or decorated hat to mark the occasion.

In the 19th century, especially during the Victorian era, fashion was highly formal and symbolic. Women wore bonnets regularly, and Easter gave them the chance to showcase a fresh, often elaborate bonnet that reflected the joy and color of spring. It became a social and fashion statement, not just a religious one.

Easter aligns with the arrival of spring in many parts of the world, and the bonnets often included flowers, greenery, and light fabrics to reflect the new life of the season. The hat decorations symbolized fertility, beauty, and nature’s rebirth.

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Sharon Tate During a Easter Themed Photoshoot With Columbia Studios, 1968.

Sharon Tate, in 1968 Easter-themed photographs taken to promote The Wrecking Crew. She kept the Steiff rabbit and it was later spotted in the guest room of her home, in 1969.

At the time these photos were taken, Tate was an emerging starlet in Hollywood. She was gaining recognition not only for her beauty and fashion sense but also for her growing film career. By 1965, she had appeared in small roles and was on the cusp of major fame with films like Valley of the Dolls (1967) on the horizon.

This photoshoot is one of the many examples of how Sharon Tate embodied the style and spirit of the late 1960s — fashion-forward, feminine, and free-spirited. It was also one of the last major studio promotions she did before her tragic death in August 1969.

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Wonderful Color Photos Show How People Dressed For Easter Parade in New York City in the 1950s

In the 1950s, the phrase “Sunday’s best” meant something quite different than it does today. On Easter Sunday, families from all walks of life would dust off their best and most extravagant dresses, hats, and suits in celebration of the holiday — and in New York City, the Easter Day parade was a place for all of these bold and colorful fashions to hit the street for all to see.

Easter in New York has become synonymous with a pageant of people marching down Fifth Avenue, many wearing large over-the-top hats, reveling in the sunshine. The tradition of the Easter parade began after the Civil War as a “fashion promenade,” rooted in the custom of a Sunday walk following religious service. Wealthy New Yorkers would emerge from their respective houses of worship along Fifth Avenue to stroll down the street, dine at hotels nearby, or pay social calls. Some members of the congregation at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, located at 5th Avenue and 53rd Street, carried flowers used in the Easter service to St. Luke’s Hospital located at 54th Street.

The Sunday stroll was particularly popular on Easter Sunday as it marked a time to show off the latest trends in fashion. Dressmakers and milliners would line the streets producing sketches of the ensembles later copied by department stores within weeks of the holiday. Hats decorated with faux flowers, tall ostrich feathers, and taxidermy birds were at the height of fashion.

Michael W. Gorth, an amateur archivist from San Diego, California has been collecting vintage Kodachrome slides from flea markets, estate sales and antique stores since 1996. Often times he’ll comb through hundreds of images to find the perfect shot that will transport viewers to another era. Gorth estimates that he’s looked through over 200,000 images since he started this hobby. He got lucky uncovering this treasure trove of photos that he purchased from Ebay, sight unseen. They arrived in a yellow box labelled Easter Parade 1953 and was instantly taken by the show stopping fashions of the time.

“What I like about the photos is that there is so much diversity walking around, black, white, Asian, Spanish... and everyone looks so happy and proud enjoying themselves and everyone else. It’s just hard to believe at that time there was so much racism and it doesn’t show at all in these photos,” said Gorth to Daily Mail.

Now represented by Lost Color Library, below are a selection of photos from Gorth’s Easter Parade series that offer a stunning flashback to New York in 1953.

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10 Wonderful Vintage Easter Covers of The Saturday Evening Post Magazine

May your Easter be filled with fluffy bunnies, colorful eggs, and very fancy hats!

The Saturday Evening Post is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely circulated and influential magazines within the American middle class, with fiction, non-fiction, cartoons and features that reached two million homes every week.

The magazine declined in readership through the 1960s, and in 1969 The Saturday Evening Post folded for two years before being revived as a quarterly publication with an emphasis on medical articles in 1971. As of the late 2000s, The Saturday Evening Post is published six times a year by the Saturday Evening Post Society, which purchased the magazine in 1982. The magazine was redesigned in 2013.

Below is a small collection of 10 wonderful Easter covers of The Saturday Evening Post from between the 1910s and 1950s.

Couple on Easter Walk – J.C. Leyendecker. April 6, 1912.

Easter Dutch Girl – J.C. Leyendecker. April 3, 1926.

Easter, 1928 – J.C. Leyendecker. April 7, 1928.

Easter Egg Hunt – J.C. Leyendecker. April 15, 1933.

Springtime, 1935 boy with bunny – Norman Rockwell. April 27, 1935.

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The Bunny Hop From The Ray Anthony Show (1953)

Ray Anthony & his orchestra perform the 1950s dance sensation known as the “Bunny Hop” on this 1953 episode of The Ray Anthony Show.

The bunny hop is a novelty dance created at Balboa High School in San Francisco in 1952. It is a mixer dance, sometimes also referred to as a “party” or “dance party” dance.

The dance has been generally done to Ray Anthony’s big band recording of the song with this name. It was a vocal hit in 1952, and instrumentally re-recorded circa 1958. The song has been re-recorded by others, including musical updates of the style, for example, a salsa version. Duke Ellington recorded “Bunny Hop Mambo” in 1954. Other popular music of the era is also used, such as “The Glow-Worm.”

20 Terrifying Photos of Children Posing With Creepy Easter Bunnies From the Mid-20th Century

It was a tradition that took place every year when spring rolled around. Your parents would take you somewhere to partake in some Easter festivities — whether it was hunting for eggs or shopping for an outfit — and lo and behold, there would be an Easter bunny waiting for a photo. Despite your protests, your parents would force you to sit on its lap and take a picture.

Easter Bunnies have certainly come a long way since we were kids. Children today have no idea how disturbing some of these costumes were, and how we were scarred for life. Here are 20 reminders why kids today have it a lot easier..

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Photographs of the Famous O’Neil Sisters Dressed Up Their Homemade Matching Clothes for Easter in 1952

In the 1940s and 1950s, one of the most indelible images of Boston was that of the O’Neil sisters, all ten of them eventually, in matching dresses, bonnets and corsages, promenading up the Commonwealth Avenue mall.

Wearing new clothes on Easter is a centuries-old tradition meant to symbolically honor the resurrection of Jesus. For the O’Neils, honoring that tradition required collaboration among the family members, who ranged from ages 3 to 19. Mrs. O’Neil sewed, the biggest girls ironed, the middle-sized girls attached buttons and the smallest girls attached basting thread and retrieved dropped thimbles.

“The Ten O’Neil sisters,” as they were known, regularly appeared in Easter parades in matching outfits and gave musical performances. The 1952 burst of outfit-making documented by LIFE photographer Nina Leen was in preparation for a weekend migration to New York where the O’Neils were scheduled to appear on an Easter television program.

The O’Neil sisters continued their public appearances well into adulthood. Their website includes a photo from the Boston Herald in 1983 of them marching arm-and-arm in Boston’s Easter parade.

Mrs. O’Neil pinned up hems on all ten of her daughters’ dresses in preparation for Easter, 1952.

The O’Neil girls’ hats and gloves were inspected by the youngest sisters in preparation for Easter, 1952.

One of the sisters, Jane, ironed a skirt while her mother and sisters worked another suit in preparation for Easter, 1952.

Cutting cloth for the Easter suits, Mrs. Daniel O’Neil and her daughters working from a paper McCall’s pattern, 1952.

The O’Neil family readied for Easter, 1952.

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A Collection of 50 Lovely and Fun Easter Cards From the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Happy Easter!

Here is a gallery of 50 colorful Easter postcards from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The earliest known depiction of the Easter bunny in the United States was acquired by the Winterthur Museum in 2011. The drawing from 1800 is by schoolmaster Johann Conrad Gilbert, who immigrated to Pennsylvania from Germany.

In fact, the Pennsylvania Germans brought many Easter traditions to America, which had their origins in the Pagan holiday celebrating the beginning of spring, known as Eostre. The hare, which is one of the most prolific animals in nature, was considered a symbol of fertility, and children would prepare baskets of colorful eggs for the hare to sit on.

Christians adopted these traditions for Easter, in which believers celebrate the resurrection of the messiah Jesus Christ. But the themes of birth, rebirth, and renewal remain constant. The grass is green, flowers are blooming, baby animals are being born. It’s a time of year when everything seems dewy and new. That’s why vintage postcards for Easter, especially those from the Victorian era, are so charming, with their depictions of fuzzy bunnies, newly hatched chicks, children and young women dressed in their Sunday best, and beautiful pastel flowers.

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Torches of Freedom: Photographs of Women Smoking Publicly During the Easter Sunday Parade in 1929

Cigarette companies began selectively advertising to women in the late 1920s. In 1928 George Washington Hill, the president of the American Tobacco Company, realized the potential market that could be found in women and said, “It will be like opening a gold mine right in our front yard.” Yet some women who were already smoking were seen as smoking incorrectly. In 1919 a hotel manager said that women “don’t really know what to do with the smoke. Neither do they know how to hold their cigarettes properly. Actually they make a mess of the whole performance.” Tobacco companies had to make sure that women would not be ridiculed for using cigarettes in public and Philip Morris even sponsored a lecture series that taught women the art of smoking.

On March 31, 1929, at the amidst of the Easter Sunday Parade in New York City, a young woman, Bertha Hunt, stepped out into the crowded Fifth Avenue and lights up a Lucky Strike cigarette. This act, however, is not advertising for Lucky Strike or for any other cigarette brand for that matter. It is a public relations campaign, aimed at encouraging women to have equal opportunities – including the right to smoke and not be classified as a “fallen woman” – the name given to prostitutes and “characterless” women.

Miss Hunt issued the following communiqué from the smoke-clouded battlefield: “I hope that we have started something and that these torches of freedom, with no particular brand favored, will smash the discriminatory taboo on cigarettes for women and that our sex will go on breaking down all discriminations.”

The incident was highlighted even more because the press had been informed in advance of Hunt’s course of actions, and had been provided with appropriate leaflets and pamphlets. Eddie Bernays – the father of public relations – whose secretary just so happened to be, Bertha Hunt, cleverly arranged this public relations campaign. Apart from the issue of smoking being taboo amongst women, there was also the issue that, “…women didn’t care for the green packaging of lucky strikes, and the manufacturer concluded that changing the color was too expensive.” Bernays was able to address this problem by incorporating the similar shade of green into the latest women’s fashion. This, in turn, made women subconsciously like the green and associated the packaging of the cigarettes with that of their clothing.

While walking down the street Hunt told the New York Times that she first got the idea for this course of action when a man on the street asked her to extinguish her cigarette as it embarrassed him. “I talked it over with my friends, and we decided it was high time something was done about the situation.” The New York Times dated April 1, 1929 ran a story titled, “Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of Freedom”. As women all over the country took to this new found symbol of their emancipation aggressively, Bernays must have had the last laugh at the ironic date of the story.

Mrs. Taylor-Scott Hardin parades down New York’s Fifth Avenue with her husband while smoking “Torches of Freedom,” a gesture of protest for absolute equality with men, 1929.

Edith Lee smokes a cigarette on the “Torches for Freedom” march, New York, 1929.

Ten young women followed Bertha Hunt that day down Fifth Avenue, brandishing their torches of freedom. The audience’s imagination was captured as newspapers enthusiastically reported on this new scandalous trend. Bernays used “sexual liberation as a form of control.” The days that followed saw Bernays not only emphasizing the liberation movement for women as far as cigarettes were concerned, but also waxing eloquence on its slimming properties and glamour quotient that ensured women getting hooked to Lucky Strikes. Sales doubled from 1923 to 1929. Bernay’s justified his $25,000 paycheck to Hill and their fruitful association continued for another 8 years that saw a miraculous jump in the sales of cigarettes. While voting rights were yet to be granted to women, Eddie Bernays got them an equally symbolic though hollow torch of freedom in a spectacular fashion.

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Pictures of New York’s Easter Parade From the 19th Century

New York City has hosted an Easter parade on Fifth Avenue since the 19th century. Taking place on Easter Sunday, for decades it was one of the most significant cultural events of the year. The parade, known for its display of beautiful bonnets and fancy hats. You can see how packed the streets near St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

One of the first places crowds gathered to display their Easter finery in New York City was not Fifth Avenue, but Central Park. The New York Times of April 21, 1873 reported:

“In the afternoon the crowds began to arrive. By every line of cars they swarmed into the Park. And, strange to say, there was a full fair sprinkling of the comparatively aristocratic classes, besides those who habitually make the Park their paradise on fine Sundays. Many couples were promenading who had certainly come from St. Thomas’ and other Fifth avenue churches, for their prayer-books were still in their hands. It seemed to be a universal exodus. Their were ladies in the most delicate Spring attire, poor sewing and shop girls in their Easter finery, ragged little children playing tag, to the great scandal of the straight-laced. And their were gentlemen in fine Spring overcoats and in heavy Winter overcoats, in Spring suits and Winter suits. Their were ladies in heavy silks and warm furs, and beside them others in the latest varieties of cameo fabrics.  It was evident that if some had come to parade their finery, the great majority had been perfectly surprised by such kindness on the part of Spring, but had determined, like sensible folk, to enjoy the fresh air and the glorious day in their old clothes   It would be impossible to calculate the crowds that swarmed over the Park like emigrating bees.”

By 1879 the Easter Parade was officially taking place on Fifth Avenue according to The New York Times. The newspaper on April 14, 1879 commented  “that Fifth Avenue was crowded with promenaders” and “Spring bonnets were worn by every lady promenader.”

The tradition of the Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue continues in the 21st century and is no longer an aristocratic event, but one open to anyone wishing to show off their sense of style (or lack of it). Here are some images of the parade from the late 19th century:

1890

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1899

(via Stuff Nobody Cares About)

17 Vintage Photographs Show Women Wearing Crazy Easter Bonnets in the Mid-20th Century

There is something freeing about wearing a chicken or a bunny or carton of eggs on your head! Even if you don’t celebrate Easter as a religious holiday, Spring is something we all celebrate, and what better way to help usher it in, than with a new hat!

Women, throughout the years, have bought new hats to wear to church services on Easter and to wear in local parades. They have been elegant, dramatic, whimsical, functional, and down right ridiculous. But Easter bonnets are a fun part of our fashion history!

Below is a collection of 17 crazy vintage Easter bonnets from between the 1940s and 1960s.

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