Magazine Advertisement – Old Magazine Articles

Under-Nourished German Children
(Magazine Advertisement, 1922-3)

Attached is a sad advertisement that ran on the pages of THE NATION for a number of years following the end of the war. Posted by a German charity, the ad pictures -what we can assume to be- a starving German child from one of the more impoverished regions of Saxony or Thuringia. All told, the photo and the accompanying text clearly illustrate the economic hardships that plagued post-World War I Germany.

Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.

Trench Coats on Madison Avenue
(Magazine Advertisement, 1918)

The trench coat has become such a mainstay in the male wardrobe throughout the years it is difficult to imagine a time when the great shopping boulevards were without them. Perhaps the first men’s shops to offer them in the U.S. were on New York’s Madison Avenue: F.R. Tripler and Brooks Brothers, where the garments can still be purchased to this day. The attached vintage print ad was commissioned by F.R. Trippler for a gabardine trench coat as well as the sale of private-purchase flexible protective body armor. The body armor appears to have been modeled after a German design. The reader may be disappointed to learn that the Madison Avenue boutiques no longer offer body armor.

Brooks Brothers & Christmas 1917

During America’s short and costly participation in the First World War, a prominent New York clothing establishment, Brooks Brothers, did swift business making custom uniforms for both the Army and Navy.

As the following attachment will show, they also offered forty other items that were of use to both the officers as well as the ranks.

Click here to see a Vanity Fair editorial about Christmas gifts for Doughboys.

The Shirt Tuck
(Magazine Advertisement, 1921)

There is no doubt about the fact that in the 1920s, there lived a great number of men who left the world a far richer place for their having walked the earth when they did; fellows like Pablo Picasso and Bertrand Russel, to name only two. The shallow editors at OldMagazineArticles.com think that is all just ducky, but what we really want to know is how did these men keep their shirts tucked in? How could such fellows as these look so presentable when so many men before them have failed?

We did some digging around and this is what we discovered…

A New Kind of Motorcycle
(Magazine Advertisement, 1914)

Pictured is the attached advertisement is the Harley-Davidson Two-Speed Twin of 1914, which featured the patented Step-Starter and the expanding rear brake.

Men’s Undergarments: 1921
(Magazine Advertisement, 1921)

Attached is an illustrated magazine advertisement from a polite, middle class American periodical which depicts two trim bucks in the full flower of youth wearing their under-lovelies so that all the internet gawkers can get a sense of how wildly uncomfortable men’s underwear used to be.

Click here to read about the introduction of the T shirt to the world of fashion.

Girl’s Tennis Blouse
(Magazine Advertisement, 1920)

Pictured in this file is Sis Hopkin’s Middy Blouse for tennis. Cut to resemble a sailor’s jumper, a popular look for girl’s upper-class leisure attire, the ad ran in VOGUE and TOWN & COUNTRY:

A chic and charming blouse for the charming summer girlie at the paddle, in the tennis court or in the school room.

Man at His Best: The Raccoon Coat
(Magazine Advertisement, 1921)

Here is a perfectly charming fashion illustration of a young man wearing a raccoon coat while abusing a tobacco product; this class of man was also prone to sitting on top of flag poles, concealing flasks and dancing the Charleston.

Click here to read about the 1956 college revival of the raccoon coat.

Work Clothes for Rosie the Riveter
(Advertisement, 1943)

Two images depicting the factory clothing prescribed for women war-workers on the American home front during the Second World War.

More on the women war workers of W.W. II can be read here…

Men’s Straw Hats from the Early Forties
(From a 1941 Magazine Ad)

Attached are pictured six straw hats from a 1941 color ad promoting the Stetson Straws that appeared on the glossy pages of one of the more bourgeois American magazines just seven and a half months prior to the day when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and the bad-old days of World War II kicked-in for that rare breed of man known as homo-Americanus.

There can be no doubt that the fun-loving fashion-fan who was pictured sporting these organic chapeaus would soon find himself wearing one of Uncle Sam’s over-laundered denim stitch-brims, peeling potatoes and remembering wistfully the day that this ad was shot.

We hope he survived the carnage.

American Officer’s Musette Bag
(Advertisement, 1917)

The attached magazine illustration is from an ad for a commercially produced musette bag for American officers during World War One.

American Army officers, like the men in their ranks, had no particular need to ever bother with a musette (we have learned that a musette is a small French wind instrument, not unlike a bag-pipe). The bag pictured here was intended for personal effects that would be needed while on the march: stationery,toiletries, housewives).

Due to the French prowess involving all matters military during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the English language is lousey with French military terms, many of which are very much in use today.

FDR’s Sense of Charity
(A Magazine Advertisement)

The Mobilization for Human Needs charity campaign was the brain-child of President Roosevelt; it was based on his belief that private charities, when teamed with either county, state or the Federal government, could serve the public good better than these agencies could do when working separately.

The attached page appeared in hundreds of popular magazines during the Fall of 1933 imploring the readers to donate to the local charities that were associated with this campaign.

The Fifth Avenue Soldier
(Advertisement, 1918)

The haberdashers of the Franklin Simon Company of Fifth Avenue, New York City, simply must not have been reading the many news reports regarding the horrors of industrial warfare. Indeed, their concept of coping with such carnage involved offering such sale items as silk handkerchiefs, cashmere socks and a dashing bathrobe for tooling around the barracks.

Click here to see what Brooks Brothers was selling During World War One.