Fashion – Page 21 – Old Magazine Articles

Summer Fashions
(Stage Magazine, 1934)

Illustrated with three nifty black and white fashion illustrations, this critic lays it all on the line as to what the most exciting part of ladies fashions will be for the summer of 1934 – there is much talk of the Paris offerings from Marcelle Dormoy, hats by Tappe and smocks by Muriel King. However, no other fashionable bauble attracts her attention more than the concept of the net dress:

The thing that everyone is going for now is net and, when you see that new net dresses, it is pretty hard to understand why this frivolous fabric was forgotten so long. It is being made into dresses and jacket dresses which are called cafe clothes; street-length skirts and crisp, starchy necklines and usually, short sleeves, each with its individual brand of ingenuity.

Click here to read an article about the nature of adultery.

Paris Fashion, 1913
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1913)

The unknown author of this article believed deeply that the Paris fashions of 1913 were very much in keeping with the grand traditions established and maintained by that city since the eighteenth century. This critic was very impressed with the recent work of Paul Poiret and Doeuillet and presented a number fashion illustrations to prove the point. Oddly, the article is credited simply to Worth which leaves one wondering whether the writer was one of the sons of Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895); Jean Philippe Worth or Gaston Worth, both of whom had inherited their father’s great house of fashion.

The Old Hollywood Way to Physical Perfection
(Literary Digest, 1937)

The old flesh sculptor himself, Donald Loomis, late Physical Director for MGM Studios, let loose with some 1930s tips as to how he was able to make all those movie stars look so utterly fabulous – some are quite useful (some are pathetic).

Symmetry is the objective of Hollywood body sculptors. For bust-reduction, Loomis has a simple formula: Jump up and down with no support. Exercise in which the arms are forced backward and forward horizontally are used to develop the upper chest…

Click here to read an article about the demise of a popular 1940s hairstyle.

Men’s Correct Clothes
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1919)

These images, as well as the headline, were from a paid avertisement for a fashionable fifth avenue shop that had originally appeared in a chic Conde Nast magazine.

Swank in the Cold
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

The slobs who run this website are a slovenly lot, so don’t take our word for it – but we believe this hooded turtleneck sweater that showed up on fashion’s catwalks during the fall of 1952 to have been the proverbial bees knees!

P.G. Wodehouse on the Virtues and Vices of Artists
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1916)

Written under the pen name P. Brooke-Haven, this very funny essay was in fact written by Vanity Fair’s drama critic, P.G. Wodehouse, who attempted to understand the criminal nature of artists.

The Life-Saving Capabilities of Victorian Fashion
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

Many and myriad are the scholars who toil over this website daily, but not one of these over-paid and under-worked nerds were able to recall a single instance during the American Civil War in which ladies’ fashions served to benefit any of the combatants – until this article was found.

A VOGUE MAGAZINE article about Washington etiquette can be read here…

Men’s Clothing for the Spring of 1916
(Strauss Theater Magazine, 1916)

Twelvemonth ago, the war had sobered ‘le monde ou l’on s’amuse’ like an icy douche. Europe rang with the clump of tramping feet. Forked lightening seemed to lurk in the sky. In club cars of limited trains and smoke rooms of trans-Atlantic liners heads were put together and the air was as tense as a fiddle string… Fashion tipsters, with long ears and short sight, said that the world would put on black, and style was knocked in the head, and look for the deluge, and so on ‘ad nauseum’.

Men’s Clothing for the Spring of 1916
(Strauss Theater Magazine, 1916)

Clothing the Camper and Yachtsman
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1917)

For all too few it is understood that fashion need not end in the wilderness: for it is more than likely that that was where the need for fashion was first recognized and it was there, among the toads and the dung, that the Well-Dressed man first crawled out of the muck and civilization

was born. With all this in mind, Robert Lloyd Trevor reviewed the fashions for the enjoyment of camp-life in this 1917 Vanity Fair review. Another vital concern touched upon by the journalist was the clothing available to the yachtsmen at that time:

Yachting is one of the things that begin at the bottom. That is to say, at the shoes. They are the foundation, as it were, for the rest of life on the rolling deep.