Apparel Arts and Esquire Images

[davidhuh]

Dear Minh,

many thanks again, this is wonderful stuff! I especially like the St Moritz tableau, as I will be in Gstaad in a few days.

Cheers, David

[alden]

Minh

Illustrations chosen with such taste! Exactly what I would expect of you.

I think the thing that will amaze most readers is the wit and wisdom contained in the texts here. There is so much good taste on display. The writers were not slaves to advertisers like the pens for magazines and blogs are today. They appear to be simply reporting on trends as they appeared rather than working to make trends appear.



My tailor is making just this coat for me in a 560 gms cashmere and wool in dark camel. I am sending him this picture to further his inspiration. Mine is with horn buttons. Now I have to have a large herringbone trouser to match.

It's funny but of the fifteen or so tests that I sent out a couple weeks ago there are a few right out of these latest Esquire posts. The Lovat coat with brown double check is an example. Mine uses the base color of the Agnelli flannel with a thick Moorit brown windowpane. The effect should be pretty close to that illustration.

I hope Christmas does not end so we can see more.

Thanks again...keep em coming!

Michael

[J.S. Groot]

Thank you Minh for taking your time to scan and post these images for us to enjoy over the holidays!

The golf outfit is supreme. I have long wanted such trousers - now I must have them made, and the jacket as well!

What continuously amazes me with AA/Esquire is the diversity of even the simplest articles. Look at the hosiery advertisement for example. And the shoes also: I love my leather soled shoes, but I definitely need a couple of pairs with crepe soles for those easy days just hanging around in a thick sweater.

[Minh]

Welcoming the New Year with a warm vision of summer, June 1934, from Esquire.

I've included the smaller pictures to show the whole page, and the larger pictures to emphasize the texture and color of the cloth.





The gabardine suit, but in a less common (today) shade of grey-green:





The fabric picture for travel wear:





The brown suit with pink shirt:

The distinguishing characteristic in clothes of this type is the tendency to emphasize the natural line of the shoulder, and the soft construction.

My apologies if there are any overlaps with the great Etudee's scans.

The tan jacket, Esquire suggests, can be made in gabardine, flannel, or shantung silk.





A striped flannel suit, paired with a camel-hair polo coat:





An Esquire wedding:





Waistcoats for daytime formal wear are made of linen:

[ismailalmurtadza]

When we talk of summer clothing,I could say a porous kind of cloth would come to mind.But in the 1st and 3rd illustration it gives me the impression that it is a tweed.Is there such thing as a summer tweed.?Or is the LLCC are thinking in that line to produce a summer cloth that look like tweed?Can LL Linen be done which such result(I mean close to tweed's texture)?.Mr.Alden is a man of creativity.Perhaps he is already thinking and will soon be in the pipe line.

murtadza

[Luca]

Yessss! A pair of bold pin-striped grey trousers as the bottom part of a mornign coat ensemble.

[Minh]

Happy New Year's gentlemen. Presenting the July 1934 Esquire:





The fabric picture for tennis court wear:





The fabric picture for summer evening wear:





The fabric picture for golfing wear:





A medium dark grey flannel with white chalk stripes, spaced 3/4ths of an inch apart. The overcoat is a camelhair polo coat:





A tan shantung silk suit:





A cotton jacket woven to look like a tweed:





The golfer's uniform:





A seersucker, not in a stripe, but a check:





A linen Norfolk jacket:





Shoes for the summer:

[alden]

This cloth looks like the LL Thornproof but in a larger scale..Interesting.

[alden]

I really like this tweed. There is a test somewhat similar going to be made.

Cheers

[jscherrer]

Agree Michael, like the light taupe/dark taupe check...assume the test is a Shetland?

[Minh]

Our resort trip continues with Esquire, August 1934.

A double-breasted suit in lovat green flannel, paired with a pale blue broadcloth shirt:





A natural color linen jacket with blue madras shirt, brown suede shoes, and blue-grey flannel trousers. Surprisingly, flannel was once regarded as a year-round fabric:





Sportswear for the yacht:





A cream Harris tweed jacket with rust overplaid:





Summer formalwear. On the upper left, a tropical worsted dinner jacket. On the upper right, a white linen jacket.





A brown gun club check tweed:





White flannel trousers for tennis. An interesting detail: the polo shirt is not made of cotton, but of wool:





Lovely advertisements in this issue:

[alden]

Minh

Great stuff.

I think the wool Polo shirt would have been made of an Etamine wool ("Wool challis.") Liberty used to make a variety of this called Varuna wool. It was made in Switzerland but is made no more. I have a vintage Italian Polo shirt and a Yukata made of wool Challis. It is just splendid.



Cheers

[lgcintra]

Dear Michael,

Is the lovat-green flannel on page 134 a feasible prospect for the CC? That is something exquisite not seen at all these days -- at least by myself.

Best,
Luis

[Frederic Leighton]

Michael is right; the 1930s were the most stylish decade. Beforehand, in the 1910s and 20s, clothes were excessively trim. The effect was rigid, formal, and confining, especially when paired with the hard, starched collars of the time. What was tight in appearance was restricting in spirit [...]. The comfortable, draped suits of the 30s made the men of that time look more casually elegant, while the fuller chests and wider shoulders were more masculine. They could move and leap in their clothes. [...] Thom Browne or the Kuppenheimer boys would tear a seam if they jumped.

Les années folles, the roaring twenties - a time of great dynamism. Torn seams unfortunately belong to our time of poorly sewn suits and frozen ready meals.

[couch]

Indeed, though I think the mid-thirties produced, on the whole, the most elegant masculine silhouettes, people were moving a lot in the twenties, including Fred and Adele Astaire in the Gershwins' 1924 "Lady be Good" on Broadway:



Jack Buchanan was dancing actively on Broadway and the West End stage in the 1920s, and Steichen's portrait of Rudolph Valentino in 1926 shows quite a fluid and accommodating line, with high armscye and plenty of room for movement:



So it couldn't have been all stuffed sausages. And Scholte was already developing his cut by the 1920s, as can be seen in pictures of the PoW from late in the decade.