Fashion

Was Tobé the First Fashion Stylist?
(Delineator Magazine, 1937)

Here is a 1937 magazine article from the long forgotten pages of DELINEATOR MAGAZINE insisted that they found the very first fashion stylist -some lass named Tobé (born Taubé Coller, a.k.a. Mrs Herbert Davis, 1890 – 1962). They were very insistent on the matter, although they failed to explain the sources used to reach this conclusion:

This woman is the first official stylist…Now she is head of Tobé Incorporated, through which she does for more than a hundred stores in America and some in Canada, England, Australia, Norway and Sweden.

America Responded When Dior Marginalized the Bust Line…
(Tempo Magazine, 1954)

Christian Dior, the Frenchman who covered up women’s legs with his post-war ‘New Look’, has now decided that the female bosom must go. In fact, if Dior has his way, the feminine figure itself will go – the bust flattened to the backbone, the wasp-waist a thing of the past, the fair curve destined to be replaced by the washboard look of the 20s.

Edith Head on Paris Frocks
(Photoplay Magazine, 1938)

A telegraph from Hollywood costume designer Edith Head (1897 – 1981) to the editorial offices of PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE listing various highlights of the 1938 Paris fashion scene. Not surprisingly, it reads like a telegram:

Paris says:


• Long waistlines, short flared skirts, fitted bodices, tweeds combines with velvet, warm colors…

• Hair up in pompadours piles of curls and fringe bangs.

• Braid and embroidery galore lace and ribbon trimmings loads of jewelry mostly massive.

• Skirts here short and not too many pleats more slim skirts with slight flare.

The great Hollywood modiste wrote in this odd, Tarzan-english for half a page, but by the end one is able to envision the feminine Paris of the late Thirties.

Recommended Reading: Edith Head: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood’s Greatest Costume Designerstyle=border:none.

Click here to read about physical perfection during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Broadway Costume Design for the Fall
(Stage Magazine, 1933)

In his review of contemporary Broadway costume design for the Autumn of 1933, the fashion journalist asked the pressing question:

What is the well-dressed play wearing these days?

There was much talk of Chanel, Schiaparelli and the House of (Elizabeth) Hawes as he heaped the praises high and deep for the the rag-pickers who clothed the ungrateful actresses for such productions as Men in White, Undesirable Lady, Her Master’s Voice and Heat Lightning.

The fashions in the plays are vivid, authentic, and wearable. They have sprung from the gifted brains and fingers of the cream of the crop of designers, Schiaparelli and Chanel in Paris, and our own industrious Americans who, themselves, are becoming hardy annuals. The silhouette is lengthening into slim height but even in sports clothes corners are rounded and curves are accentuated…

Cosmetic Surgery in 1930s Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Published in a 1930 fan magazine, this article tells the story of the earliest days of cosmetic surgery in Hollywood:

Telling the actual names of all the stars who have been to the plastic surgeon is an impossible task. They won’t admit it, except in a few isolated instances…It is only lately that a few of them are beginning, not only to to admit that they’ve had their faces bettered, but to even go so far as to publicly announce it.


Click here to read more articles from PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE.


Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York nightclubs of 1937.

Cosmetic Surgery in 1930s Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Published in a 1930 fan magazine, this article tells the story of the earliest days of cosmetic surgery in Hollywood:

Telling the actual names of all the stars who have been to the plastic surgeon is an impossible task. They won’t admit it, except in a few isolated instances…It is only lately that a few of them are beginning, not only to to admit that they’ve had their faces bettered, but to even go so far as to publicly announce it.


Click here to read more articles from PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE.


Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York nightclubs of 1937.

The Wandering Waistline
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

Looking back, the fashion silhouette of the 1950s is remembered as having a very narrow waistline, but in the early days of the decade, as this 1951 fashion review indicates, the feminine waist was a highly contested battle ground:

Where’s the waist? Paris popped the question, but has yet to give the answer. On the one hand, many leading designers showed a tendency to raise the waistline. But they were challenged by a strong minority that seemed determined to drop it [pictures of both high and low are provided herein]…Apparently, Paris has decreed it the year of the wandering waist. Where it will stop may well be up to American women.

If you’d like to read about the feminine silhouette of the early Forties, click here.

Beauty in the Congo
(Click Magazine, 1938)

Fashions these days are simply fraught with Third World influences such as tattoos and piercings and there is no reason to suspect that fashion’s dictators might one day soon decide that the elegant life is best lived with a cone-shaped head. The attached fashion article is illustrated with three pictures of the mode-conscious Manbetu tribe of Northeaster Africa who live life large as the African Longheads.

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