Fashion for Men
Esquire Magazine
1957 (original copyright)
1966 edition
Need to get that retro chic look from the late 1950s? This guide has all the details so you can look your very best.
I actually liked looking through this book. The details and the explanations are really interesting. If you have an interest in menswear or in retro fashion, this might be a good choice. I definitely think this has a place in a design or fashion collection. Yes it is dated and not exactly user friendly, but it is detailed and has some decent illustrations. Fit is the major theme of this book. The details are subtle, but let’s be honest, to my untrained eye this book is a costume manual for the film The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
I had no idea that men need fashion advice for pajamas or for college.
Mary
My favorite: Sleep coat is “modernese” for nightshirt. Who knew?
I love the minimum and well-rounded lists for campus fashion! Nary a t-shirt to be found.
But *five* dress shirts minimum!
I sent my son off to college in September without a snap-brim felt hat, gray flannel slacks, hose, or handkerchiefs. Clearly, I have failed as a parent 🙂
PLEASE tell me you didn’t forget the center-crease felt crown hat! How can you possibly expect him to learn without THAT??? The horrors! *clutches pearls*
Husky man has a blueprint; Tall, thin man is reading a script; can’t tell what the other two doing.
I find myself very, very curious about what the similar minimal and well-rounded young woman’s outfit would be.
THREE tweed sports jackets? Even for the time, which is not ancient history to me, that seems a tad excessive. I guess I never hung with the “well-rounded” crowd.
That’s the skinniest Fat Man I’ve ever seen.
Short, small man looks about the size of today’s fifth grader.
There was a lot of prenatal smoking and drinking back then.
Which happens to be exactly my height. Ridiculously short adults in the ridiculously short adults club.
Plaid suit, striped shirt, figured tie… let’s play pile on the prints!!! No help with color combos, just keep adding patterns til you go blind. Also love the drawing with the white pants and “wild tie”, apparently in this world polka dots are considered “wild”. Unless you mix them with plaid.
And, he apparently is about to, or did just, play tennis! Must be hard to serve in that blazer.
Short, small man is trying not to be blinded by the sun.
Fat man is annoyed and thinking he’s barely plump.
Do they tell you what’s the most fashionable steamer trunk for bringing your “minimum campus wardrobe” to the dorm?
If that is their definition of a fat man…..? Have they ever seen real people?
When this was written, there were a lot fewer fat people.