French Catalog Scans: Belle Jardiniere

[Broccoli]

Yes, that's always interested me. I just can't imagine that even France, with their obsession with officialdom (proscribed baby names, Académie Francaise, etc), would have a government-approved range of fashions.

In my Swedish catalog the prices of items were price moderated by the state, something related to the war.

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

 

[Nick D]

Nice! I especially like the page showing the different styles of fronts.

 

[Fastuni]

Thanks for another round of great French illustrations.
Note lapelless sportcoat No.16 and an interesting DB notch-lapel hunting jacket No.21. Looks like a blend of a sportcoat with a short Ulster.

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

Nice! I especially like the page showing the different styles of fronts.

Yes. The lapels are wide but not cartoonish. Some members here were concerned about their MTM suits looking 70s ...maybe they can use these pictures.

Thanks for another round of great French illustrations.
Note lapelless sportcoat No.16 and an interesting DB notch-lapel hunting jacket No.21. Looks like a blend of a sportcoat with a short Ulster.

I really overlooked that 21 is DB...interesting.

 

[Two Types]

No20: White wool plus fours - nice one!

 

[Fastuni]

No.14

One-button suit with sandals!

(And tiny pipe for the Baron...)

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Oh those crazy Continentals with their miniature pipes. The real foundation of the second world war, of course: Meerschaumchen Rauchensraum, the German desire to dominate the European diminutive smoking paraphernalia market. Not to mention the historic abuse of the German novelty shirt collar market, which only heaped fuel on the fire.

 

[Fastuni]

May tobacco explain their drive towards the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean then?

Oh those crazy Continentals with their miniature pipes.

I am amused by the lack of imagination of some illustrators. They couldn't come up with a more lively pose to present men's fashion other than smoking, holding a smoke, lighting a smoke or holding gloves, canes or umbrellas?

These look books could well have doubled as tobacco ads.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Especially the French ones. Burton's catalogue illustrations are often labelled "Drawn/painted from Life" suggesting that men really were constantly, but constantly, smoking, or preparing to smoke, or thinking/dreaming about smoking.

p.s. according to latest research, the German drive to the south and east was entirely due to Greek partisan slanders about a particular brand and model of German sports shirt, in 1938 officially adopted as official Party lounge wear for Berchtesgaden jaunts. Leaked/smuggled photographs of Fatty Göring changing his collar for a game of tennis (miniature pipe of course daintily balanced on end of thumb) was lampooned around the world, but particularly in Greece and Jugoslavia where a performance by a local music hall comedian became the hit of the 1938 Christmas season. No comment was made about the tiny pipes featured in the advertisements, knowing as the Greeks did the attachment of the hierarchy to the manly and Übermensch-designed mini-pipes, and fearing for their own tiny pipe manufactories which would be helpless against the onslaught of the behemoth that was the German Meerschaumchen industry.

 

[Nick D]

Note lapelless sportcoat No.16 ...

I don't know how common the term was, but these were sometimes called 'cardigan blazers'. It may have been an American term.

 

[Patrick Hall]

p.s. according to latest research, the German drive to the south and east was entirely due to Greek partisan slanders about a particular brand and model of German sports shirt, in 1938 officially adopted as official Party lounge wear for Berchtesgaden jaunts. Leaked/smuggled photographs of Fatty Göring changing his collar for a game of tennis (miniature pipe of course daintily balanced on end of thumb) was lampooned around the world, but particularly in Greece and Jugoslavia where a performance by a local music hall comedian became the hit of the 1938 Christmas season. No comment was made about the tiny pipes featured in the advertisements, knowing as the Greeks did the attachment of the hierarchy to the manly and Übermensch-designed mini-pipes, and fearing for their own tiny pipe manufactories which would be helpless against the onslaught of the behemoth that was the German Meerschaumchen industry.

This reads like a paragraph out of Thomas Pynchon's epic weird alternative history of the 20th century, Against the Day

 

[Baron Kurtz]

You should see my shirt advertising copy! (patent pending)

I don't know that Pynchon (also not a great fan) but will seek it out. My ramblings remind me most of Edward Whittemore's reimagining of the writing of the Old Testament - a blind and illiterate scribe being dictated to by a visionary, epileptic lunatic by the side of a road somewhere in the desert. It certainly reads that way!