Another FREE Vintage Tie Contest

[Marc Chevalier]

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Here we go with another vintage necktie contest. First, the question:

In the early 1930s, a psychologist working for the fashion industry wrote that the era's summer menswear was all wrong. Instead of wearing blue blazers with white flannel trousers, men should wear white blazers with blue trousers. Why did the pychologist believe this?


Please don't PM me with your answers (or guesses); instead, post them here in this thread. The first correct answer wins you:


A handsome late 1930s brocade tie in patriotic red, white and blue rayon. Gotta love that Art Deco zigzag pattern. Mint condition.
Best of all, it's DEAD STOCK: no one has ever used this tie.

Good luck!

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[Feraud]

Because the psychologist believed the white blazer & blue pant combo was a better option for dealing with the Summer heat?

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Nope. Good guess, though!

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

Because light colors make things appear larger, white blazer with blue pants make a person appear to have a broader chest?

 

[BellyTank]

Could it possibly be something to do with colour-?ɬ¶sthetics and upper vs. lower body proportion..?

B
T

 

[Sparhawk2k]

Did this have to do with J.C. Fl?ɬºgel's The Psychology of Clothes (1930)?

 

[Brad Bowers]

Mood-altering Blazers

The white blazer would do more to cheer them up than the blue. This was, after all, the Great Depression.

Brad

 

[BellyTank]

Because light colors make things appear larger, white blazer with blue pants make a person appear to have a broader chest?

Beat me again Berkov!

B
T

 

[Sparhawk2k]

I Just Broke My Psychology Professor...

She doesn't know but now she's going to be thinking about it all day long. And she's going to blame me. That can't be good for my grades...

 

[Marc Chevalier]

HA! :eusa_clap

 

[WEEGEE]

WHY

BECAUSE HE WAS PAID TO THINK THAT WAY

 

[Senator Jack]

This one's tearing me up. I'm along with Brad, though. The market crashes the previous October - it's the first summer after - so what is it about blue down to white that is different from blue up to white. Perhpas the colors don't matter as much as what the combination represents? By a very long stretch of the imagination it has something to do with the yachting look of affluence - blue blazer/white pants (I tend to make crazy links like this) - so perhaps the opposite wouldn't remind people of the good times of just a year before (when everyone was making money)

Also blue is the sky, wherein a year before the sky was the limit. Nah, I don't like that one. Anyway, I would never wear a white blazer with blue pants and I think the psychologist should have been the one to have his head examined for suggesting such a combination. Nice tie, though!



Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

Yeah, it struck me as a sort of stupid combination too. Perhaps it would yeild an effect similar to wearing a white dinner jacket with black tuxedo trousers...only in daytime...and with blue trousers.

If I remember correctly the origin of blue blazer-white pants is simply the addition of a blue suit jacket to white sporting trousers which didn't come with a matching jacket. Eventually blue jackets were made on their own rather than simply being purloined pieces of blue suits. I guess that is when the gold buttons, patch pockets and the like became standardized.

Thus I would guess that not too many people in 1930 would have odd blue trousers and a white blazer in their wardrobe. Perhaps this was all just a facade in order to sell "fashionable" white blazers and blue pants which would be as dead in 1940 and leizure suits were in 1990. Planned obsolescence after a fashion.

 

[Senator Jack]

Blue chip stocks are down, the pants are down? No, that stinks like onions, doesn't it? I'm thinking, I'm thinking...

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[WEEGEE]

To bad it was not green

Edward L. Bernays

Albert Lasker is given undue credit for supposed advertising genius for his advertising slogan for Lucky Strike cigarettes aimed at women. However, 1930s surveys showed that many women didn't buy that brand merely because the green color of the package didn't go with their wardrobes, so advertising huckster Edward L. Bernays set out to make green a fashionable color. "Under the auspices of a local charity, Bernays planned a Green Ball and dispatched a well-connected society matron to the Paris couturiers to coax them into providing green gowns for the event. He convinced a leading textile manufacturer to sponsor a Green Fashions Fall luncheon for fashion editors and invited an art historian and a psychologist to expatiate on the significance of green. He organized a Color Fashion Bureau, which disseminated trends to the press, naturally emphasizing the popularity of the color green."

"Using green paper, he concocted a letter-writing campaign to interior decorators, art-industry groups, department stores and clubwomen describing the sudden 'dominance' of green. He induced department stores to feature green dresses and suits in their window displays, and he persuaded the Reinhardt Galleries to hold a "Green Exhibition" of paintings. The result of this six-month flurry: green became the hot new color of fashion."

 

[pablocham]

As a practical matter, white trousers get dirty and require cleaning very often, but dark ones hide the dirt. Trousers always get dirty more than jackets. Thus wearing white trousers always requires more care and caution than wearing navy ones.

The psychological angle would be that white trousers, because they get dirty and require extra care, are rather impractical. Thus they belong to the sphere of fashion and ornament and, by virtue of that, they are more feminine than masculine. By wearing white trousers men make themselves more like women, who are typed as frivolous and impractical, and less like men, who are typed as sensible and practical.

None of this is my actual opinion, btw, I am just making a guess at what the rationale might be.

 

[WEEGEE]

semiotics

In his Psychology of Clothes(1930), J.C. Flugel observes that ?¢‚Ǩ?ìcertain articles of clothing can symbolize an unyielding character,rigorous moral standards and purity of moral intent.?¢‚Ǩ?

 

[scotrace]

John Watson (who, after getting booted from his job at Johns Hopkins--he was improperly seeing one of his students--he was hired as an advertising exec.)

Watson was a behaviorist (i.e., we act as we do primarily due to our environment.)

You wear a jacket without the intention of taking OFF the jacket. Blue jacket absorbs more heat than white jacket.

ANSWER: Wear a white jacket and you'll be cooler (and not show perspiration stains.)

 

[Feraud]

I hope I do not sound too desperate (or crazy) in thinking this...
If you throw a red tie into this ensemble the effect is more patriotic? Red tie, white blazer and blue slacks?..

 

[WEEGEE]

Riddle me this

In the early 1930s, a psychologist working for the fashion industry wrote that the era's summer menswear was all wrong. Instead of wearing blue blazers with white flannel trousers, men should wear white blazers with blue trousers. Why did the pychologist believe this?

He was standing on his head and again he was paid to.