Advertising Clothes (1940)

Good morning!

I am home sick with a touch of fever (and on a rainy Tuesday morning, too...all I need is to doll myself up in my favorite dressing gown to feel more like a Brontë heroine!), so this is just a short post, but I wanted to show you guys the craziest thing I found on Sunday when I was going through the ads. Bellyed up to some advertisments I was tracking down was a featurette that ran under the byline "Advertising Symbols Glorified In New Prints For Spring Clothes". Bust! My! Buttons! My attention was grabbed with a "whoah".

In this article from 1940 Life magazine, I could see some proto Warhol, proto pop art going on as textile maker Princess Fabrics rolled out swatches of material and ready made dresses emblazoned with, just as the title promised, advertising logos of the early 1940's. I mean, really. REALLY. Take a look:

The symbol for Greyhound on the right is so muted I thought at first I was just looking at a tiger stripe pattern...if you look twice, the lithe mascot for the company is leaping across the pale yellow background in a dizzyingly tight formation. How ingenious! I was reminded, in looking at these, of Project Runway's myriad of challenges that require the designer to incorporate some particular brand or maker or theme into their designs-- the Greyhound as an animal print would definitely win that runway, in my opinion. A print even Kors could love! On the right, the Indian head symbol for Pontiac invokes the car manufacturer's name sake, Native American Chief Pontiac of the Great Lakes Region. You can see the old logo for the brand on the sign in this gorgeous color postcard of a proud car dealership in Oklahoma:

How blue was my Pontiac. (source)

Ballantine Ale (on the left) was a popular brand of pale ale in the forties' and fifties'; you can see more about their history on their official website. Aren't both of these gypsie-cap style forties' bandanna usages interesting? The curls still peeking out from the sides and the tight wrap are calling my name. I wasn't sure what Coty manufactured until I googled the brand and came up with the pretty op-art powder-puff containers you always see at estate sales in a Forest Hills woman's luxurious dressing room. They make face powder among other cosmetics and beauty products. Mystery solved!

Ballantine and Coty products, respectively. (source, source)

Here are two of the print dresses in action. My greatest regret is that the photo editors didn't see fit to do these in color as well! You KNOW they were some doozies. I love, in pre-sixties' use of novelty prints, how the print is truly subdued enough that you wouldn't know it was a chevron or a powder puff or a greyhound until you really looked at the print. That subtlety is so much more interesting that hundred point font interlocked C's for branding.

Look at those buttons! LOOK AT THOSE BUTTONS!

Red, yellow, and blue seem to be the three dominant colors in this line. Here are some more prints from the article. Which one do you deem most appropriate for inclusion in your wardrobe?

The coffee drips! The Uneeda biscuit child hovers! Do you see the little print logos in between his phantom form?

I think these four may be my favorite. The Bell telephone logo kind of lends itself to a print anyway, but the Spearmint and the Peanut....and heck, the Pegasus, are neck and neck for the one I would have to buy. I didn't even know Spearmint had a spokesperson. I thought it was the twins from those ads, but that's Wrigley's Doublemint. Look at this ad on a wall from someone's Flickr account. HOW. OMINOUS.

I will never buy this gum! I will also never sleep again! source

So tell! Which print do you like best? Which American symbol of right now do you think could be included in a similarly subtle overall spring print? Can you think of any old time advertising mascots that were completely terrifying and are (rightly) no longer representing their product? I'm writing Target right now-- we need to see these on our local clothes-sellers racks, but NOW!

That's all for today...I'm off to watch a ton of Criterion on Hulu and nurse this illness. Keep a good thought for me, and I'll see you tomorrow!