Tootal - The Company History and its products (ties, scarves etc)

[Two Types]

Any idea of the date of that advert?

[Baron Kurtz]

see edited post

[Two Types]

In the USA it appears that Tootal fabrics were marketed under the name T.B. Lee Ltd. (for Tootal Broadhurst & Lee). I don't know whether they sold ties/scarves in the USA, or simply sold the fabrics.

[herringbonekid]

there are many Tootals which i would swear were 1930s going by the fabric design alone, such as this one:



and this one of mine (green quality):




they resemble American designs of the 20s such as Superba etc. yet because they are British and British style changed much more slowly than U.S. style they could easily be 40s or 50s.

[Two Types]

Here is a 'Popular Quality' label. It is the only one among my ties with the light colour label:

The tie has a very different feel to all the others I own. It is more like a cotton than a rayon. I suspect it is earlier than most of my other Tootal ties.

Here is an example of the 'Silver Quality' labels that came in later and that i usually spot on trevira ties, rather than rayon ones.

[Two Types]

And here is a 'Gold Quality' label. This is from a period when tie manufacturers were happy to admit to advertise the fact that their product was Terylene - a "100% polyester fabric" as if that was something good.

[Two Types]

The Tootal scarf was ubiquitous when i was growing up. Everyone's dad seemed to have at least one. My father always had one, always wore one in winter (apart from a brief and curious phase around 1990 when he started wearing a Palestinian/Yasser Arafat scarf). When i got my first job as a 14 year old in 1980, a Tootal scarf was one of the first things I spent my money on (it was one of the terrible latter period, polyester ones - wine with white polkadots - but my heart was in the right place).

There must have been thousands of them, since they are the most easy to find vintage item these days in the UK. The most amazing thing about them was the amazing array of patterns. Although they are most famous for their Paisley patterns, it was the other styles and the highly stylised (often geometrically influenced) versions of paisley that are most interesting.

Here are some examples:

[Two Types]

And some more scarf patterns:

[Baron Kurtz]

Ditto. If Ben S. is reading this, maybe his Menswear magazines will have some early 40s Tootal ads? I don't recall, but these might at least let us know what the "Quality" designation was in earlier times than the earliest ad in this thread …

there are many Tootals which i would swear were 1930s going by the fabric design alone, such as this one:


they resemble American designs of the 20s such as Superba etc. yet because they are British and British style changed much more slowly than U.S. style they could easily be 40s or 50s.

[Two Types]

I have got a couple of 'Standard Quality' ties on order from EBay. Current thinking puts them early 1950s at the latest. They were advertised as 'skinny tie Mod sixties'!
I have mixted feelings about bad listings on Ebay: describing a 1940s Tootal as 'sixties' might put me into competition with the mods - a correct listing puts me into competiton with the rest of you etc.