If You Say, "I'm Just Too Thin!" - McCall's, 1934-35

More from the archives, an article from McCall's in 1934-35 (I'm almost positive, it was with a bunch of other images from these years) that is a favorite of mine. Besides the funnyness factor in the somewhat contrived storyline and the obvious pattern promotion (hey, it was a McCall's magazine, it makes sense), this peek into the past is especially interesting considering the current societal debates on body ideals. It's crazy when you consider that the girl, shown in the "Before Makeover" picture, wouldn't pass modern designers' standards, and they would most likely require her to lose more weight before hiring her. But I won't go into a "modern beauty standards" rant, its all been said....

Anyway, the "After" picture is lovely (but I don't think the "Before" is that terrible), I do love her dress and hat and gloves... okay, everything. I've enlarged both the "Before" picture and the "After" picture for easier viewing.
By the way, I realize that I didn't photograph the rest of the article, but if I remember correctly, it ended quite soon on the new page anyway, so you aren't missing too much.

Click to enlarge and read the article!

Before clothing makeover. That hat is a little awkward and elongating with that outfit, but for goodness sakes, there's nothing that should make her go "When I look in the mirror, I could die of mortification - I'm so thin!"

After.

- Emily

Artist Feature: Harrison Fisher

Born in New York in 1877, Harrison Fisher worked from the turn of the century until his death in 1934. And that's pretty much all I know about him. I'm not too interested in doing a bunch of research, I'm content to just admire his illustrations. Here are a few favorites:

"The Evening Hour" - I'm pretty sure this is my favorite of all. The best part? This was done for Cosmopolitan. Now I know this would never happen today, but come on, isn't this so much better than the stock photos of pretty but forgettable-looking people straddling each other in their underwear (Cosmo's illustration of choice nowadays)? This illustration leaves more to the imagination, but I wouldn't say it's prudishly subtle - I mean, with that image, and that caption, you get the idea. But its lovely to look at at the same time!

I just love this - I can't settle on what adjective describes it best, it can be two totally different things, depending on how you look at it. Romantic or humorous? Dark or whimsical? Beautiful or beautiful? 

Artist Feature: Charles Gates Sheldon

Greetings Blogoverse!

We’ve decided to start a series on illustrators and painters and photographers whose work we really love and admire. Most of them will be posted over the next few weeks, but from time to time as we discover/are reminded of new artists, we’ll add more. Hopefully this doesn’t bore you – but I think these artists will have wide appeal to the vintage crowd, after all, all the ones we’re featuring are vintage aged or antique! 

So here’s the first artist: Charles Gates Sheldon. I don’t know much about him (he hasn’t a Wikipedia page! Gasp!)… He was born in 1889 (one site says 1894?), died in 1960 (another says 1961!). The height of his fame as an illustrator was around the 20s and 30s, and he painted a lot of female celebrities and magazines covers, but he did work before and after those times. And that’s about all I know, besides that his portrait illustrations were stunning. Here are a few of my favorites, below. 

Enjoy!

The wonderful Katherine Hepburn.

Gorgeous Jean Harlow.

Whaddya know! The illustrator of our blog header! (Not specifically for us - I wish! - but you know what I mean.)

More Vogue in the Mid-Late 30s

Here's more from the fashion magazine archives. This set is also all from Vogue, circa the mid-late 1930s. Click on the images to get the highest resolution.
Enjoy the loveliness!

Oh, the prettiness. I adore both of these. I had to make this smaller so it wouldn't be overlapping with the sidebar...

Look at that second the the right one! Isn't that such an interesting shape? 

*Drool*... the black and white ones on the nearest pair of feet.

Dramatic, feminine, and full of little details... of course I love this one!

A Bit About Weddings

I love weddings. Or the idea of them at least. I actually have only been to one wedding in my life. I was 7 so I sort of hated it. Anyway, I now appreciate them because they are one of the few times large groups of people get together and have to dress nicely, and that makes me really happy. Also, there are some really pretty weddings so I am really excited to go to any weddings in the future (my cousin just got engaged so I will going to at least one soon).
Anywho, I was snooping about in my Grandma Ana's stuff and found her wedding album so I took some pictures of the photos. She was married in '52 I think... and must have gotten knocked up pretty quickly since my mom had two older brothers, and she was born in '55.
... anyway...

Have to Have Hats

Here’s another photo-heavy post. After doing a post on shoes, I felt that I must do one on hats, in order to honor the special place they have in my heart. Hats are the only accessory that can compete with - or, dare I say it, outweigh - my love for vintage shoes. Unlike shoes, which play a more practical role in everyday life, hats aren’t exactly necessary. But, as the title of this post says, I simply must have them. I love them. The right hat can complete any outfit, can change the mood of it, can flatter or disguise certain features. Hats can be serious, plain, feminine, or frivolous, though I tend to favor the latter two categories of hats. And they’re just freakin’ awesome, to put it inarticulately. People today seem to really notice hats – for better and for worse. Many times I’ve worn the same outfit in public, without a hat and with a hat, and when I wore it with the hat, the nice comments (and the rude stares/stinkeye) increased manifold. I suppose this is because nowadays hats simply aren’t done, unless you wear a doo-rag/baseball cap or are British nobility at a wedding or day at the races. But this shows just how polarizing modern hat styles are – they’re either extremely casual or very fancy. There’s not much of an everyday nice-casual presence of hats. How I wish this wasn’t the case.

I don’t own many hats that I like to wear out (not the right era – I got a huge lot for nearly pennies of Craigslist last winter, but I couldn’t see most of them before I got them, only to realize they were mostly 50s and 60s. Poo.), but I’ve got 3 or 4 I’m very fond of, mostly from vintage shops. I’ve also gathered pictures of hats I pine for over the past year or so – the folder in my iPhoto is currently hundreds strong. Below I’ve shared a few (ahem... twenty-five) that I do wish I could miraculously find during my next visit to my friendly local antique or vintage shop.

What type of hats do you like? Do you have a particular era of millinery that makes you weak with materialistic longing?

Note: I don't know the sources of many of these pictures! I've just collected them over time via Google images and other blogs. If I took someone's original image, let me know and I'll give credit/remove it!

Especially the top red one!

Carole Lombard. I love this one!

Vogue, Mid-Late 30s

Here are some more images from my school’s archives of old magazines. Again, sorry for the weird quality of a photographed page instead of a scanned page. I’ve got a lot more to upload, but I want to space out the hundred or so images over a few posts so as not to hit you with a photo overload. This set is all from Vogue – in my eagerness start looking through the books and photographing them, I forgot to mark down the exact issues I was flipping through! But I remember the Vogue I grabbed (I took one Vogue and three McCall’s, and within each book there are anywhere from two to five issues bound together, depending on how thick they are) was from the mid-late 30s, so there’s a point of reference for you.

Enjoy!

I'm just nuts about this one. I love the repetition of scalloping and the overall styling of the suit. 

A cute advertisement.

Another advertisement. This time for comfy heels that will help your feet last all day at the fair.