The Skinny -- Winter Coat Fashion of 1935

So, we bought Seventeen magazines from the 1970s, as I shared with you a few weeks ago.  But we also bought a stack of Ladies' Home Journal magazines from the 1930s at the same time.  In the October 1935 issue, I was struck by their fashion spread with winter coats.  

Of course, I was.  We are bleeding hearts when it comes to vintage coats.  We buy them whenever we find them abandoned in a thrift store or at an estate sale.  People have even just given us their vintage coats they don't want anymore; they know we will love them unconditionally.  One of us Blackbirds (who shall remain nameless, ahem...) has a collection of coats.  She specializes in Persian lamb coats, but loves them all in their turns.

I know she will appreciate this post -- and that she will try them all on in her mind.  The text included is by Julia Coburn, and the photographs are by Fowler-Bagby.  I hope you enjoy a trip back to the fall of 1935!

The Question of Color for Your Winter Coat

It's perfectly true that a black winter coat is the most practical thing you can have.  No matching problem on accessories, and a great choice of colors in dresses, if you don't want all black.

Black is distinguished; it is sophisticated and it can be young, like the coat on the left.  A smooth soft fabric, buttoned down the front, with a turn-down collar of Persian lamb, and a soft flare to its skirt.  But would you like to try your hand with color?

Brown is, of course, the first thing you think of in the way of color, the time-honored alternate for black.  Nice with green dresses, gold dresses, rusty reds, as well as matching brown.  Beautiful with beaver or mink collar, for an all-brown coat.  The one at the right on the opposite page (photo below) uses cross fox with all its varied tones, to lend interest to the coat.  Long-haired furs are very fashionable -- the favorite silver fox, cross fox, light foxes, and very light-colored lynx and wolf, giving contrast to deep winter shades. 

In the brown coat note the tiny flecks of color in the brown, like pin dots.  They are made by colored mohair woven into the fabric.  The coat fabrics have interesting weaves this fall.  Note the sleeve fullness, coming from the back; the way the coat wraps way over to the side, held by a belt of the fabric; and the easy flare to the skirt, worn about two inches shorter than last year.  All these are new fashion points to consider when you buy a winter coat, if you want it to look really new.

If you're bored with brown, look at the gorgeous copper shade on the girl who is stepping up.  Nobody could possibly mistake that for last year's coat.  First its color, which blends beautifully with brown accessories and yet in itself is so much more exciting.  Can't you imagine it with deep auburn hair?  Think of a gray dress with it, matching the fox.  Or almost any shade of green.  Or a pinky beige.  Now look at its other points of newness: The slightly bloused back; the collar of fox mounted on fabric, adjustable, and giving a becoming softness.  Belted in the fabric, as the brown coat is, and again with a generous lap to the side.  Fortunate you are if you can find brown suede step-in pumps banded in calf in just the copper color of the coat, like those in the picture.  For shoes this year can have interesting color effects, and still be in the best of taste.  Experiment a little with shoe colors too.  Green, green and brown combined, and wine red are some of the interesting new shoe ideas to be found in the better shops.

To show you on of the wonderful new wine reds for this winter, we have chosen the perfectly stunning suit worn by the lady with the dachshund.  This type of suit is definitely a luxury, and for the woman who maintains a varied wardrobe.  The coat is long enough to wear over a frock.  The blouse and lining of the coat are of a wool shell-knit fabric in a shade of blue that looks shimmery because two different tones are used.  The coat and skirt are made of a rough soft woolen, just formal enough for the mushroom collar of beaver.  Note how the coat buttons from below the collar to well below the waistline.  Before long we may be having coats with as many buttons as shirtwaist dresses.  If you want to see a new and perfectly stunning pair of gloves, look at those she is wearing with this suit.  They are of suede, with palms, binding and lacing of the gauntlet cuffs of calf.  This year there are some happy mediums in gloves between stark simplicity and overfussy trimming.  In the case of gloves, as with so many of the things you will buy this fall, it would be wise to go shopping with an open mind.

There is one more exhibit in the coat-color family -- green.  For sports coats, you will find gay, vivid greens, a color that makes vivid contrast for fall's browns.  For the all-purpose winter coat, you will probably be more likely to choose an olive shade, of which there are darker and lighter versions.  The one worn by the girl in the center on this page has kolinsky collar and -- big fashion news -- fur cuffs.  Put together, they form a very convenient muff.  The definite flare in this coat is very important.  The flared coat, if worn short enough, is very young looking.  And you can get one in which the flare is put in at the side seam in such a way that it's a simple operation to have it taken out, if you should tire of it.

With all the new ideas there are in winter coats this year, you certainly owe it to yourself to get one that looks new.

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We don't have currently have any coats in the shop from the 1930s, but we do have this amazing fox fur collar coat!

Available here.

The Skinny: Martin Munkasci

I had planned to write about Richard Avedon. I will, someday. But today is all about the man who inspired Avedon, Martin Munkasci.

"Woman on boulder with bicycle", 1936

Multiple sources cite him as "the father of fashion photography." I had never heard of him before today. It turns out that a lot of people have never heard of him. In fact, after his death in 1963, his archives were offered to multiple museums. Nobody wanted them.

1940s Harper's Bazaar

He was a Hungarian Jew (actually born in Transylvania) who got his start as a sports photographer in his native country for a newspaper called Az Est. He was an adventurer, often called "Crazy Angle" by his colleagues. Instead of standing behind the fence to photograph the races, he would be on his knees in a puddle on the side of the track. One source claims that he strapped himself to the side of a race car in order to photograph it in motion around the track.

Munkasci, on a car

European motorcyclist, 1920s

Martin moved to Berlin, where photography was booming, and ended up working for several German publications in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He even photographed Hitler (no small feat for an Eastern European Jew in Nazi days). When the atmosphere in Germany started to get a little rough for people of Munkasci's roots, he took an overseas assignment in America for Biz, one of his German magazines. While in New York, he agreed to do a photo shoot for Carmel Snow, budding editor for Harper's Bazaar, and that was the day he made history. Not only was it the first outdoor fashion shoot, it was the first motion fashion shoot. Until then, models were posed and primped on carefully regulated sets in carefully regulated studios. With Carmel Snow, Martin Munkasci shot his model on the beach. He didn't speak English, and his interpreter was having a difficult time of it, but the model, Lucile Brokaw, understood perfectly. He wanted her to run. To move around. To splash. Looking at the photographs, you would never know that the day was actually miserably cold and damp, the model shivering.

Lucile Brokaw, Harper's Bazaar 1933

The shoot was such a success that Carmel Snow offered him a job. The next year, he moved to America to become one of the most groundbreaking photographers of the time. He was one of the first photographers to put nudes in a mainstream magazine (tastefully, of course).

Harper's Bazaar, 1935

 He continued to pioneer the art of motion photography for Harper's Bazaar, Life, and Ladies Home Journal before turning his eye to Hollywood. His work gave us one of the most well-known pictures of Fred Astaire in motion. At his peak in the mid-1930s, his annual salary was $100,000. He lived in a Long Island estate with art from the Masters on his walls.

Fred Astaire; Life, 1936

Katharine Hepburn

In 1939, his luck took a hike. His wife (the second of three) divorced him. He lost a lot of money. Then, his daughter died of cancer. While he was still in mourning, Ladies Home Journal gave him a cross-country series assignment called "How America Lives." The stress of driving from city to city, day after day, caught up with him, and his pictures weren't good anymore. They fired him. He had  a heart attack. Another wife, and another divorce, led him to poverty. He was finally reduced to loitering in the hall outside Harper's Bazaar, hoping for some work. He finally had to pawn all of his camera equipment. His last published photograph was for that magazine, in July of 1962. A year later, he died of a heart attack. The only food in his refrigerator was an open can of spaghetti with a fork sticking out of it.

1936, "Peignoir in Soft Breeze"

New York World's Fair, Harper's Bazaar 1938

People finally came around, and several decades later, interest in his work renewed. Someone discovered a series of undeveloped negatives, and an exhibit of "lost" photos was born. A few books were written, with quotes from photographers that Munkasci inspired, including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Richard Avedon. I think my favorite is Avedon's remembrance of his 11-year old self discovering  Munkasci magazine cover and gluing it to his bedroom ceiling: "His women [strode] parallel to the sea, unconcerned with his camera, freed by his dream of them, leaping straight-kneed across my bed."

The Puddle Jumper

Bathing Beauties



Information obtained from: http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG8597512/Martin-Munkacsi-father-of-fashion-photography.html; http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/04/decisive-munkacsi-moments