Not every decade has distinctive bindis. And when a decade does its usually easily seen as a trend on an actress. Here’s how the 50s, 70s and 90s looked!
Shyama, the bindi queen of the 1950s. Decorative bindis were quite popular in this decade.
Decorative bindis have such a long history. I think a number of these are designs that are painted on but a few look like early stick-ons.
Pics 2,3 via ebay, pic 6 via osianama.
Queen of the 70s bindi, Mumtaz.
There is a lot of colour in this decade. Its hardly a basic red + black bindi decade for Bollywood. Bindi carousels* meant you could play with colour, even if it was a tiny dot under the main one. There are bindis that exactly matched the sari ( a very matchy matchy decade, from blouses to shoes to handbags to bangles and flowers in the hair), the white bindi and of course decorative bindis. I think there is a bit of a mix and match of plastic stick-on bindis and liquid colour here.
Last pic from here.
*may have been around prior to this decade, its just in obvious use in this decade.
Madhuri Dixit – Queen of the 90s bindis.
Though I guess every actress was since this decade could never have enough of those stick-on bindi packets which had entire designs incorporating various colours and gems and required little more than..well sticking it on your forehead (though as in the last pic with a yellow bindi you could still do a bit of “artwork” yourself:)).
The sheer variety of shapes – including super long snaky bindis – really mark this decade. In many ways a bit of an unsubtle decade – even the zari motifs of this period on clothes tended to be a little less than delicate. But in a way it’s also the last decade of a significant change in bindis since these are still around.
Vintage Indian Clothing 
