1956-1957 Fall/Winter Sears, Roebuck suit catalog...

[thunderw21]

...with swatches.

Enjoy


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[thunderw21]

...

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[DickWhitmanMM]

Thanks!

very cool-- thanks for sharing! I wish that catalogue was still valid!
That style of hand drawings in ads and catalogues of the era is such a lost art...

 

[Matt Deckard]

I love it when I find swatches in catalogs.

 

[Sefton]

The machine wash and drip dry trousers seems a good idea. I don't think any of my vintage are Dacron/Rayon though. To paraphrase the ad line from the catalogue: "Good grooming and dress is easy...and inexpensive" (At least when you could send away for a individually tailored suit by mail,that is).

 

[suitedcboy]

Looks like the place where Mad Men shop. Well sort of, I know real Madison Ave execs probably had haberdashers who came to them measured and then delivered and fitted their suits.

 

[tonyb]

I'm diggin' the hat styles depicted in those catalog drawings. Shortish brims, tall crowns, with a bit more taper than was common just a few years earlier. A sort of transitional style between the still '40s-ish fashions of the early 1950s and the styles that followed in the early 1960s, those short-brimmed, short-crowned, quite tapered things.

I notice this because the hat in my current avatar (which at this moment is perched atop my head) is quite similar, although not as tapered, and because I'm in the midst of crafting its twin, in a slightly smaller size, for a new friend who said he wouldn't mind having a hat like the one I was wearing.

In my paging through the GQ at the local Borders (I finally found that feature on hats) I noticed that the hat styles most prevalent these days are quite reminiscent of those of the early '60s. (But then, so are many of the suits, with their closer-fitting trousers and lower waists and narrow lapels.)

Perhaps I'm a hopelessly wishful thinker, but here's hoping that we're witnessing a reversal of the trend of nearly 50 years ago. Let's see the hat styles popular among the current crop of trendoids (at least they're wearing hats, let's give 'em that much) grow wider brims and taller crowns over the next few years.

 

[Sefton]

Early-mid 60's trousers aren't really low waisted. Not as high as the heights of the 50's,but still far from being on the hips. If you look at films and magazines from the early part of the 1960's you can see that the waist is still decently placed. As for the hats; my VS stingy widened my horizons by narrowing my brim.

 

[tonyb]

Early-mid 60's trousers aren't really low waisted. Not as high as the heights of the 50's,but still far from being on the hips. If you look at films and magazines from the early part of the 1960's you can see that the waist is still decently placed. As for the hats; my VS stingy widened my horizons by narrowing my brim.

Yeah, I find my tastes considerably more expansive than they were, back when I thought a brim narrower than 2 1/2 inches just wouldn't do.

Oh, by the way, I didn't say "low waisted." I said "lower waists."

 

[resortes805]

These suits are boring.

Let's see that catalog's "Ricky" jackets!!!!!