Let's Take a Trip!

Friends, we're traveling today, so pack you bags.  We're climbing into our trusty time machine -- safety belts, please! -- and traveling back exactly sixty years, to 1951.

Our focus is fashion, but we're going to see much, much more.  Our guide is the October 1951 issue of Woman's Home Companion, a popular magazine aimed at the American homemaker.  Like so many women's magazines of this era, Woman's Home Companion combined articles on fashion, decorating, health, politics, as well as (gorgeously illustrated) contemporary fiction.





I love to read books about fashion history, but searching out primary sources is even more fun, and it's not hard. Vintage women's magazines -- and there were so many -- are easy to find, especially at flea markets, usually for just a few dollars.  Unlike vintage patterns or store catalogs, there's very little interest in old general interest magazines like Woman's Home Companion (which folded in the late Fifties).  Yet they are a treasure trove of information about what life was like back then, particularly for (white, middle class, MARRIED) women.

They are also bursting with unintentionally hilarious ads  -- postwar consumerism was taking off -- classic period graphic design (think, cluttered) and sumptuous color photography.

This October issue is also chock full of fashion.  Let's take a look...



Waists were nipped and skirts were often full, but not as big as they were later to get.  Heightened femininity was the look of the day, with an emphasis on perfect grooming and elegance.



I must make Cathy a lounging ensemble like this...







A great article about separates.  Do you know how to mix and match?





Women were expected to know how to sew, and this 1951 Woman's Home Companion has many sewing machine ads and sewing-related articles...









Fifties advertising is exuberant -- there was so much to buy, so many new appliances and products to make life easier!
 







The operative word here is exciting -- Americans had never had it so good and life seemed to be getting better and better. 

Many more photos from this issue of Woman's Home Companion are viewable here.

Readers, do you like to look through old magazines or collect them?  Which are some of your favorites?  Which do you enjoy more -- the articles or the ads?

Vintage fashion magazines are wonderful, but I honestly think these general interest homemaker magazines are much more fun.

Lemon Cheese Cake Pie, anybody?

Have a great day, folks!

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Favorite Books on Fashion History

Readers, one of my goals this summer is to increase my knowledge of fashion history -- particularly of the last century.

It's not that I know nothing about fashion history, it's just that most of what I've learned I've picked up watching old movies.  If Lana Turner didn't wear it, I might not know about it.  I have a lot of books on period style but these focus more on industrial design and decor (also areas of interest).

At the Mid-Manhattan Library yesterday I picked up some gems I'd like to share with you, along with a few others I own.

Forties Fashion: From Siren Suits to the New Look by Jonathan Walford (Thames & Hudson, 2008) is a stunner.  Like many of you, I adore Forties fashion -- the cuts, the colors, the accessories, everything.  One of the wonderful things about this book is that it includes German, Italian, British, Australian and even Canadian fashion of the period as well as American.  As one might expect from a fashion book, the photographs are beautiful, but the writing is also excellent: clear and compelling.  (Did you know that due to American wartime restrictions, no collar or ruffle on a dress could be more than 5" wide?)

Happily, the text and the photos support each other, which isn't always the case in fashion books (photographs in many books seem to have been chosen by someone who hasn't read the text too closely, or the photograph will end up pages away from the description of it).



Many of the fashions are modeled by mannequins here, but accessories are included.





Fashion Since 1900 (second edition) by Valerie Mendes and Amy de la Haye (Thames & Hudson, 2010) is more of a pocket-sized book but still full of great photos, and it provides a clear overview up to and including the current period (make sure you buy the second edition).  Although the tone is academic, this is a great book to start with, and you can carry it on the subway.







Not to be handled without a forklift, Fashion Today by Colin McDowell (Phaidon, 2000) is an eight-and-half pound treasure, bursting with gorgeous images and fascinating essays on such topics as "Designer as Superstar," "The Lure of Retro," and "Modeling the Image."  McDowell's writing can be a little dense but he speaks with tremendous authority (he is/was the Senior Fashion writer of the London Sunday Times.)

Warning: the print in this book is in a non-serif font (Arial?), making it tiring to read.  The print is also miniscule -- you may need a magnifying glass and/or aspirin.  Art direction takes precedence over legibility here. 







I already owned Lesley Jackson's The Sixties (Phaidon, 1998), which has an excellent chapter of textile design, and the many historical and ethnic influences that inspired designers of the period.





While not a fashion book, fashion trends are discussed in Thomas Hine's classic Populuxe (Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), which covers design and social trends during 1954-1964, the height of postwar American consumerism.  I love this book.





You can view a more pics of these and other fashion and fashion-related books here.  Are you familiar with any of them?

Friends, what are some of your favorite fashion books?  Any you particularly recommend to the student of Twentieth Century fashion history?

Any pet peeves about fashion books you wish to share?  (In his chapter on models and modeling, McDowell describes a famous Helmut Newton photo in great detail but fails to include a photo of it -- thank goodness for the Internet!)   UPDATE:  McDowell specifically apologizes for this in the back notes -- Whoops!)

Jump in!

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The Celebrity Pitch

Readers, many volumes have been written about advertising and its role as lubricant in our (rapidly rusting) consumer culture.  But after reading the many excellent comments to yesterday's post about models, I wanted to talk more about it. 

Reader Some Girl made a great point, that the message behind much of today's fashion advertising is "People who are this perfect wear our brand" as opposed to, by wearing such-and-such a brand (or label) you will look more whatever -- beautiful, alluring, sophisticated, etc.

I mean, how sophisticated can anybody look in their underwear?

The celebrity ad seems to operate in both realms.  We want to buy Lux soap flakes (up top) because Jane Wyman uses them, and because by using them we'll end up looking more like Jane Wyman.  (Wait -- am I the only one who still wants to look more like Jane Wyman?)

Consider this contemporary Louis Vuitton ad campaign, which I'm guessing most of you are familiar with.

That's Mikhail Gorbachev, the last head of state of the former USSR, and -- ahem -- not exactly a fashion plate.  Why on earth would anyone care what kind of luggage he uses?  Well, apparently whoever designed the ad campaign believes someone in their target market does care.

Here's another in the series.  Obviously, women without shoes are serious women, who have more important things to worry about.  Which is not to take anything away from Angelina Jolie -- a UN Goodwill Ambassador after all -- and what should she be carrying, a recycled burlap tote?

In the highly competitive luxury goods market, who knows what works and what won't?  When I was growing up, this Blackglama mink ad campaign was in full swing and I loved following them to see which old-time star would show up next. 

I wonder how many coats Joan Crawford really moved...but I digress.

Readers, are you seduced by celebrities in ads?  Are you able to see beyond the movie star and focus on what is being advertised?

On a somewhat related note, do ads featuring scantily clad, dissipated teenagers make you want to head off to the mall to buy jeans, gulp down a few Excedrin -- or both?

As in so many areas of life today, we seem to be throwing everything at the wall in hope that something will stick.  Nobody seems to know what works.

I had a sort of epiphany yesterday while tut-tutting over that Banana Republic "Inspired by Mad Men" photo: It doesn't matter what I think.  Those clothes are not supposed to work for me.



Their target market is likely decades younger, someone with no living memory of the styles, to whom this stuff looks fresh and edgy, not stale and derivative.

As so many have mentioned, the Sixties revisited the Twenties, the Seventies the Forties, and so on.  A lot of those styles were lifted piecemeal, without much reinterpretation.  Remember these record albums?

So what's wrong with a little early Sixties in the -- what are we in again, the teens?

Friends, I could talk about advertising all day, but I really must get a move on.

If you were advertising something like, say, Louis Vuitton luggage how would you sell it?

Is associating a bag with a former head of state a cynical ploy, a brilliant strategy, or both?

Why do we still fall for this stuff?  (Note to self: shower, change underwear, smile.)

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Models Then and Models Now

Friends, I'm back and ready to take on the world.  Of modeling.

Suzy Parker.  Dovima.  Jean Patchett.  Lisa Fonssagrives.

These are just a few of the most famous models of the 1950s and early 60s.  Like today's models, they were beautiful.  They were young.  And they were ballerina-skinny.





In those days, models modeled and that's about it.  They didn't star in reality shows (though Suzy Parker did have a role in The Best of Everything and a few other films) and they weren't seen much outside of magazine layouts and ads.  But they were recognizable and certainly embodied a standard of beauty and glamour (maybe more the latter than the former) few non-models could ever match.

Readers, what's different about models then and now?  Why do so many people focus on models today and critique their (genetically) tall, thin bodies? 



Haven't models always merely represented a highly art-directed ideal, human clothes hangers that showed off a dress to its best effect?



When I was looking at photos of models then and models now, the greatest difference I noticed was the amount of skin models are expected to display today.  Skimpy underwear, bikinis, nude shots -- almost nothing is left to the imagination.

Though Fifties models appeared in swimsuits, these tended to be modest one-piece numbers, as was the style back then, and the images were never sexually provocative, but rather, wholesome.

Direct sexuality was the stuff of pin-ups and other "adult" material (think Betty Page).  Today there's very little difference, aesthetically.  And this isn't just true of female models -- men are also expected to pose provocatively in underwear or nothing at all.

In the Fifties, women's clothes may have been restrictive and demanded corsets and cinchers, but the models bodies were covered.  Nudity was rare.



It's as if today, when so much of fashion is standardized, we're more interested in the hanger than the clothes.

Wise readers, your thoughts.

Just so we're on the same page, I'm operating under the assumptions that 1) models are more visible today, thanks to television and the Internet; 2) modeling itself is much more mainstream and often seen as a springboard to an acting or business career; 3) models -- their weight and how they are represented -- are more a focus of women than they were in generations past.  You may or may not agree with these.

Does the increase in nudity reflect our more body-conscious, sexually liberated times?  Does the constant exposure to models' (photoshopped always) bodies create more self-image problems for women than the more covered-up, highly stylized models of generations ago?

I'll have more to say about this later in the week, but why do these Banana Republic ads look like children playing dress-up...



...compared to the real thing?





Is it the makeup, or is it a life spent wearing corsets, heels, and gloves, that make the original models look mature and comfortable and the 2011 models look synthetic, derivative, and awkward?

Jump in!

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