Emotionally Bright, Literally Numb

Parody/inspired by this picture in one of my vintage Sears catalog books:

The Piyorin flavours depicted here are:

- Matcha and Sakura in his hair

- Classic on his shoulder

- Sweet potato on his hat

- Tea on his knee

- Strawberry and chocolate on the grass to the right

When I made my Fem!Alastor and Niffty catalog pages, my primary book resources were the “Fashionable Clothing From the Sears Catalogs” books, specifically their Mid 1930’s and Early 1950’s books. They have three books per decade from the 30’s - 80’s, though it’s all fashion from their own company, so it’s not the most versatile source but it does make for a good overview.

My book collection has grown since then, so I’d also recommend “1930s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook” by Charlotte Fiell and “Fashions of the Roaring ‘20s” by Ellie Laubner.

As for websites, Vintage Dancer is a great website for quick overviews of fashion by decades, from the Victorian era up until the 1980’s. Sometimes I’ll visit museums to study garments (I went to the V&A to study 18th century garments and artefacts for my recent Lucifer fashion plates), but a lot of museums have online archives that you can look at if you can’t make it to a museum in person. For example, the Kyoto Costume Institute has a great online archive, they collect garments from around the world, not just from Japan. Looking up catalogs from the time period can be good too, if you know of specific brands, they can give you more direct results than a general “1950’s women’s fashion catalog” google search. When it came to Niffty’s page, I looked up teen fashion at the time as she seems a bit on the younger side (not exactly a teen herself, but she seems the type to dress younger than more mature). If I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, I’ll look up photographs of people from the era I want.

In regards to “evidence of asian immigrants embedding some for their cultural fashion into daily wear”, I’m not an expert in this area. I don’t know if more Asian influences to fashion in the 1920’s - 1950’s western world came from westerners growing fascination with the “oriental” and “exotic” (please forgive the outdated terms), or from the immigrants themselves. If you want to have an outfit that’s based more on Asian influences from Asian people, maybe it would be best for you to look into how Asian countries adapted western fashions to their own cultures. For example: western fashion really started to take off in Japan after the Second World War, and while many people started wearing western clothes, some designers took the sensibilities of western clothes and applied them to traditional Japanese garments, like Sueko Otsuka did with the “New Kimono”, where she tried to incorporate western-style features into casual kimono styles to make them “easy to move in”. This line of thinking might be a good place to start your research.

Fashion Plate 1: Habit à la française of embroidered silk, with flowers for an absent lover: zinnia (I mourn your absence. Yellow: daily remembrance. Magenta: lasting affection), aster (patience), ivy (fidelity) and Indian jasmine (attachment). Jacket and waistcoat are bordered with gilt-brass cord and fastened with buttons of cast gilt over brass foil.

Fashion Plate 2: Habit à la française of red and gold woven silk in scale pattern and borders of gold thread, adorned with embroidered apple buttons. Waistcoat is silk with tamboured Eden pattern and red foil spangles.

Fashion Plate 3: Robe de chambre d’orgueil of silk damask, worn over silk ditto suit with repeating apple design.

Studies of human Vox’s hair. His general shape is square but his hair is actually very swoopy

Side partings, short sides and waves were the general trends of 1950’s men’s hairstyling. Actors and rebels could be more dramatic with their styling than the typical professional. I think these three (Gregory Peck, Errol Flynn and Laurence Olivier) have the most Vincent-like hair.

Hair studies of young weatherman Vincent. To me, young Vincent looks like he has more volume in his hair, like a pompadour or greaser haircut. The pompadour was popular with the young, the rebellious and the working class. Businessmen kept them short, but longer ones were favoured by performers and the young (like Vincent..?).

Let’s look at trend setting Elvis Presley. See how his hair is slicked back at the sides, has a soft side parting and is swept up over the head into a soft, voluminous pompadour.