Scans of Vintage Christmas Catalogs

WishbookWeb has a fantastic collection of vintage Christmas catalog scanned for your browsing enjoyment!

Available are old Ward, Sears, Spiegel, and JC Penney Christmas catalogs from the 1940s through the 1980s.

Link - via The Cartoonist


Awesome link. I love referencing old catalogs for my own art. It helps me try to decide what looks "timeless" and what looks "dated". Its facinating how the items in old catalogs, are easily identified and associated with a set time period. The christmas cards look VERY 40's & 50's. Its amazing how even the toys, houswares, ceramics etc are all easily identified as that time period. You would almost think the artists,designers,and manufactureres all collaborated ahead of time, and decided on a style/theme. Yet they didn't.

Makes me wonder what the "look" is for our current time period, and what direction we'll take in the future.
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I thought it was interesting looking at the clothing (me being a fashion loving gal).

As we evolve into more sophisticated beings, mens clothes seem to be taking a nose dive. Think of ye-days of old. Men used to wear suits, and look dapper in hats, spats, vests, ties, etc.
In the 40's men had well pressed slacks or dress pants, a clean buttoned shirt, tie occasionally etc. All neatly ironed and starched. Hair was a little dorky, but it was well groomed, well combed, and well kept.

Fast foward a bit to present day. Any guy who really cares about how he looks, is most often gay. And I don't mean to be insulting when I say that, but for some reason... they care, while other guys just don't.
the only time any guy looks nice, is when he thinks he's going to get some "action" or has a funeral to attend.

its like technology is increasing, but mens clothing has de-evolved to the point of a few scraps of cloth covering (ie t-shirt,jeans underwear, socks, shoes).

Soon men will get to the point where they wear nothing but boxers and just shave their heads, because trying to brush/comb it is too much work. I think a few are already at this point.
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@kerozene- i agree.. but you also have to think what the hell happened to womens' clothing? women used to dress so respectively.. modest. back in the day, it was attractive to be heavy because it meant you were wealthy (more money = more food). these days, it's "attractive" to be an anorexic (or bulemic.. whichever eating disorder you prefer) slut. when i was in high school, the more boob/ass you could get away with revealing, the more popular you were. wtf?! didn't matter if you were nice, or if you treated your friends respectively.. just how little clothing you could get away with wearing and how much of one brand your parents could afford to buy you.

"its like technology is increasing, but mens clothing has de-evolved to the point of a few scraps of cloth covering." womens' clothing is waaaay worse. and because of this, stores like Victoria's Secret and Frederick's exist...

soon men AND women will get to the point of wearing nothing. we'll just go back to the good ol' leaf. fantastic.
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