Today most New Zealand men are clean-shaven (though an increasing number grow moustaches especially for the month of 'Movember'). That wasn’t always the case. Moustaches have come and gone as Kiwi blokes have shown themselves to be dedicated followers of fashion.
New Zealanders still loved a good viceregal do. In 1948, for example, at the Dunedin railway station, almost everyone turned out to welcome Sir Bernard and Lady Freyberg (1946–52): the mayor, city councillors and senior staff, local Members of Parliament, county councillors, harbour and hospital board members and officers.
We present ourselves to the world by the way we dress and wear our hair. Whether we have carefully selected from a full wardrobe or simply grabbed the first thing at hand, our clothing is indicative of our lifestyles, our choices, the times and places in which we live.
Although the American forces worked hard, they all craved some time off. But New Zealand leisure-habits were very different to American ones. So the visitors devised their own forms of entertainment and established enclaves of American culture.
Originally meaning 'fake, false, inferior, worthless', the term 'bodgie' was applied to a male youth distinguished by his conformity to certain fashions and behaviours during the 1950s.
Sandy Edmonds was New Zealand's first pop superstar of the TV age – a 1960s New Zealand Paris Hilton – and she rose to be the swinging, groovy face of youth on pop show C’Mon.
