the male silhouette 1922 -1941

[jake_fink]

the 'scrawny little weed' look is very popular at the moment too (see any trendy fashion supplement).

Yes, very slim right now, but photos can't exagerate the effect the way these drawings do.

This comes from the later teens I think:

 

[Orgetorix]

One of the reasons I appreciate illustrations from old Apparel Arts and Esquire issues so much is that their artists (L. Fellows and others) seem to have been concerned with reproducing actual, real-world bodies and clothing styles as accurately as possible. Ads and catalogs from the Golden Era and earlier don't seem to have been so concerned. As BK observed, I doubt that either of these style extremes (the human whippet or the human bulldog) would have been actually made by most, if not all, tailors.

 

[erikb02809]

lol
I was going to sum it up as "Kermit the frog-bodied bubble heads", but I thought that would be anachronistic.

lol
Regardless, I'd say you hit the nail on the head with the look in that first image.

Assuming the look best summed up by the AC man coexisted in some proportion with the pipe cleaner look, as the variations in advertising and examples you've given suggest, it makes me wonder just why that's the case. I don't know enough about the history of fashion to say, but it begs the question of just how much of what we see in the ads was related to three factors:

1. The look of the actual clothing being advertised, as it exisited in physical reality.
2. The personal style and skill of the artist who illustrated the advertisement.
3. Trends in fashion advertising and depicting the male physique that the artist may have been trying to follow.

The reasons behind the simultaneous existance of such variations in the depiction of the male silhouette during the same time period are ones I would love to find out more about. Still, I'm more in favor of the theory that the AC man would be considered the typical ideal of the era, as opposed to the pipe cleaner look.

Either way, the hypothetical but admittedly unlikely situation of a customer whose business was attracted through one of these unrealistically proportioned advertisements being furious that his finished suit doesn't match up with how it was depicted in the ad ("BUT IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE THIS IN THE AD!!") makes me smile.

 

[Fletch]

yes, i've always wondered about those people who went into their tailors and said "make me look just like that!" while pointing at such a 40s illustration. I suspect no tailor would do that to a customer.

Put specs on No. 3003 there and lose the cig, and you've pretty much got Clark Kent as he looked in 40s comics.

 

[Jovan]

Ok. I thought I saw the ghost of one on the back illustration, but I guess I could be seeing things.

I see it too. I don't think it's far fetched to say some jackets may have still had them.

 

[cookie]

The Shoes

You have to do something with all that cloth if you're going to go from a massive chest to a fitted waist and skirt like that. It's hard to tell, but that top left coat might even have a waist seam, something that survives today only on morning coats and tailcoats but was standard in the 19th and early 20th centuries when the pinched-waist look was popular:

That illustration is from 1906. If the '40s coat above does have a waist seam, it's an interesting use of that technique to achieve almost the inverse effect from its earlier incarnation--big, draped chest with narrow waist and fitted skirt, rather than the fitted chest and flared skirt of the previous century.

Interesting how the shoes are interpreted. So high in the waist they resemble almost an RMW style boot. Is that just the drawing style?

Also the punched captoes similar to the 1920s style.