A Constant, And Terribly Vexing, Anachronism ...

... is how movies set in an era different from the one in which the movie was made blithely assume that the hairstyles and fashions contemporary to the movie makers also apply to the past that the movie depicts.
WORDS AND MUSIC is typical of this mistake: most of the action takes place in the 1920s and the 1930s, yet the women are coiffed and dressed in the fashions of 1948. The men--no surprise here!--dress in the same drab ugly fashions through the timespan of the story.