On Wednesday the New York Times posted this great fashion slide show, partially in homage to Mad Men.
It’s fabulous through and through, and photographer Douglas Friedman paid great attention to detail– the supersaturated colors, typesetting (aka fonts chosen), and even a photoshopped faux-magazine texture all really mimic contemporaneous ads. I love the colors of the clothes (green gingham!) and the expressions on the model’s face.
The most glaring difference between then and now, at least to me, was how ripped the model looks in the last ad. Models and movie stars in the 1950s and 1960s simply did not have six packs that (over)developed.
For example, check out this low-quality screen shot of William Holden in Sunset Boulevard:
William Holden & Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard
Holden is H-O-T-T in Sunset Boulevard (so is Swanson, while we’re keeping track), and his arms and legs are obviously ripped, but still has a softer belly than the guy to our right. Must be all of those mixed drinks that living in the 1950s required. And aspics. Not very slimming.
The slide show was made to accompany this article, titled “Dressing for Success, Again.” It’s about how men in their 20s and 30s are trending toward wearing suits and ties again, which is a train that most baby boomers never boarded. My favorite bit from the article:
“There’s a sense that this return to style, or to a consciousness of how you look, is an attempt by young men to recover a set of values that were at one point very much present in American society and then lost,” he said. “It strikes me as being of a piece with the way young people buy their coffee or their food: paying attention to authenticity or quality, and to whether something is organic or local. They stand for a rejection of the idea that all consumer goods are ephemeral and inevitably made in China and bought at Wal-Mart.”
Buy organic! Eat locally! Be a giant hippie and… wear a suit. The irony is delicious.
Tags: douglas friedman, mad men, new york times
December 21st, 2009 at 9:54 am
Mmmm, ironic organic locally-grown hippie suits.
I think the man’s 6-pack is part of the generalized trend toward 0 body fat for ANYONE. And also maybe a little bit scary. OK, very scary. William Holden’s still sort of scary but MUCH less terrifying than Modern Model.
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mitchco says:
December 21st, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Agreed re: trend toward 0 body fat. I think a lot gets written about this w/ women, but not as much with men, and this ad struck me as a really glaring point of comparison. Holden is scary when compared to average men, but that’s why he got paid the big bucks to be in Hollywood pictures. The gap between average people and actors/models is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, it seems.
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April 20th, 2010 at 5:12 am
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