The attached men’s fashion article concerns the a brief autumn visit to the country; recalled by an anonymous fashion scribe whose charming prose allowed us to envision a leisured life in the late Gilded Age.
A printable selection of the detachable shirt collars
(of both the cotton and rubber varities) available to both men and boys from the 1919 Sears & Roebuck catalog, no. 138.
This article is very broad in it’s appeal; the fashion journalist did not simply cover the summer suit options available to the Well-Dressed Man of 1921 but also the tennis apparel, equestrian attire and the apropriate togs for slacking off at your favorite homo-phobic, sexist, anti-semetic and racist club.
A look back at men’s jackets, both for the garden party as well as other antiquated leisure activities.
A smartly illustrated review of the the equestrian fashions for the year 1918. Various illustrated equestrian profiles are provided and brief attention is paid to the newest boots available at that time.
If you would like to read another article about men’s equestrian attire, please click here.
1916 was a poor year if you happened to be a German sailor off the coast of Denmark; it was a terrible year if you were in the infantry on the Somme or near Verdun but if you were an American man fond of horseback riding and you happened to have been shopping for the perfect riding suit on Madison Avenue, then OldMagazineArticles.com is quite certain that 1916 was a great year for you!
If you would like to read another article about men’s equestrian attire, please click here.
In our era, we don’t think it terribly odd to see someone in an art museum dressed as though they were going to go poll-vaulting standing next to someone else who is clothed as if they were intending to rope a steer. This sort of untraditional-tradition began in the twenties. The attached link will show you a magazine advertisement for men’s knickers which appeared at a time when this sort of thinking began to evolve and knickerbockers began a new life as an in-town and on-campus fashion choice. Previously, knickers were worn by young boys or strictly for men who enjoyed country sports; other examples of similar active-ware abuse in the Twenties involved the clothing of yachtsmen, hunters and tennis players. This era saw the rise of the sportswear industry.
The Side-Seam suit style had it’s appeal in the early Twenties and could be found in many a magazine in the form of vests and overcoats, however the look did not survive the era and is now numbered among the Zoot Suit and Leisure Suit as one of the forgotten fads of Twentieth Century mode.
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…
With her characteristic disregard for the unreasonable mandates of the prevailing fashion police hanging out for all to see, Elizabeth Hawes (1903 – 1971) scoffed with the deepest irreverence at the males of the species for being so thoughtless and blind in matters sartorial. Pointing out that men, who she compared to mice, don’t have to wear ties, hats, heavy leather shoes or anything else that makes them uncomfortable, but do so purposelessly and out of fear…
Click here to read a 1929 article about the Dress-Reform Movement.
This is an historic article that introduced the fashion era that we still reside in today.
The attached article from 1938 heralded a new day in the fashion industry where fashion magazines would no longer be relied upon to set the trends in clothing; henceforth, that roll would largely be played by movie actresses in far-off Hollywood:
The greatest fashion influence in America, stylists sadly lament, is the much-photographed, much-glamorized and much-imitated Movie Queen. What she wears is news, eagerly copied, by girls all over the country who want to look like Joan Crawford and Myrna Loy.
The primary bone of contention that the East Coast fashionistas found most objectionable was the fact that movie stars are Californians, and Californians will always prefer comfort over glamor.
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.
The following must have been some sort of creative writing project for one of the many bored World War One Doughboys, however it clearly spells out how the necessities of modern war demanded that the wrist watch no longer be thought of as a piece of jewelry adorned only by fops and fems and evolved into a useful tool for soldiers on the field and men with masculine responsibilities. The column makes it quite clear that prior to the Great War, a good many wrist watch enthusiasts would have had their noses broken if they had worn the ‘gimmick’ into certain neighborhoods.
These two 1932 magazine advertisements had a tremendous amount of relevance in the lives of those fellows lucky enough to still enjoy summer vacations, just two and a half years into the greatest economic down-turn in American history.
These two pages appeared in the swankiest of New York society rags during the era: STAGE, TOWN & COUNTRY and VANITY FAIR, promoting the white summer suits and linen leisurewear of the Palm Beachtailors.
After years of material shortage, the accent is definitely on the feminine, with all of its flounces… A look at all the collections shows that black is the outstanding color for afternoon and dinner. Drapings, wrappings and swathings that girdle the hips are the outstanding line. The favored fabrics are velvet , velveteen, corduroy (used horizontally, as are other striped materials) monotone tweeds, Kashas (a twill-weave fabric of wool mixed with Cashmere), and some Scotch plaids.
Having no foresight as to the fashion juggernaut that would commence in one year with the appearance of Christian Dior’s New Look, the journalist puts all her credibility in one basket by declaring that all eyes are on the French fashion designer Madame Marcelle Dormoy. Much ink is spilled concerning the bleakness that clouded fashionable Paris during the occupation and the difficulty all fashion houses experienced in 1946 securing suitable fabric for their creations (at black-market prices).
The writer recovered some of her street-cred anticipating the meteoric career return of the well-loved French film actress Edwige Feuillère (1907 – 1998), who is personified herein as the epitome of French Glamour returned.
Click here to read a 1946 article about Le Corbusier.
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.
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.
