Old ads for stuff I write about
Ads for disappeared makers and merchants of Paris as written about in my book Swan Songs (link in bio), if I say so myself the best and most comprehensive discussion of Charvet, Berluti, Camps de Luca, and many others.
A very unusual 1952 ad for Paris hatmaker Gelot, later absorbed by Lanvin, featuring a cowboy hat.
For sale (not by me) at: Publicité presse 1952 Chapeau GELOT Hatter Paris Illustration Roger DAMERON | eBay
As I wrote in my book, most of the current custom tailors in Paris, despite their current classicism, are descended (in training and sometimes blood) from a group of radical breakaway tailors called the Group of Five (le Groupe des Cinq). In 1955 they declared their opposition to the conservatism of the prestigious Paris tailors and banded together to show their seasonal designs and innovations, made in new, lighter weight cloths. The original five were Andre Bardot, for whom the 1957 fur ad is for below, Gaston Waltener (next ad, also featuring Bardot and some more classic tailors, Talon and Paul Vauclair), Joseph Camps, Socrate and di Nota. They were soon joined by Max Evzeline. The Groupe varied in composition and dissipated towards the end of the 1960s. Ready-to-wear fashion had taken the lead over men's custom tailoring.
at https://www.ebay.com/itm/186877763228
Ad for Waltener, Bardot, Talon and Vauclair:
at https://www.ebay.com/itm/186877763228, and its mate below at https://www.ebay.com/itm/204298434093
Jean Cocteau and his lover Jean Marais were devotees of Bardot; Cocteau drew an ad for Bardot in return for suits. Here, Marais poses in a tweed Bardot sportcoat (at https://www.ebay.com/itm/395124289058)
As I mentioned above, the membership of the Groupe des Cinq fluctuated. It included Gilbert Feruch, another modish tailor of the 1960s who, along with a few other French tailors, launched a ready-to-wear line in the US in the wake of French designers like Pierre Cardin. Here, a 1980 ad for Feruch:
at https://www.ebay.com/itm/315152834328
Maurice Chevalier was one of the leading lights of men's style in the middle of the 20th century, strange as it may sound, and even more strangely, an Austrian tailors named Knize were one of the foremost tailors in the world, with branches in Vienna, Paris, New York, Palm Beach and Bad Gastein. A photo of Chevalier leaving the Knize shop, apparently the Vienna flagship on the Graben:
at https://www.ebay.com/itm/187393841561
Knize's Paris shop, decorated like its Vienna shop by Adolf Loos, was one of the conservative old guard of Paris tailors. So was Cristiani, which Gay Talese writes about in Unto the Sons. Charvet acquired its goodwill around 2000. A 1964 ad for Cristiani shows that even the old guard Paris tailors were finally trying to move with the times and adopt new, more technical fabrics:
at https://www.ebay.com/itm/310705377058
For 50 years, prestigious but less cutting-edge Paris tailors would run also-ran ads in newspapers and magazines listing "The Tailors of Prestige". Ads for some of them: Charalbe, Kriegck, Lus et Bevfe, and others:
at https://www.ebay.com/itm/204339730014
1953 ad of this type, at https://www.ebay.com/itm/163654993444
You'll notice some of the names in the ads above (Talon, Tomasini, Vauclair). Lorys was the tailor whose Left Bank address Arnys took over when Lorys moved across the river in the 1930s.
at https://www.ebay.com/itm/297057996984
at https://www.ebay.com/itm/124238797817
Alan Flusser, whose books educated many an iGent, used to write that there were five Paris shirtmakers celebrated as the best in the world in the 1920s: Poirier, Seelio, Seymour, Boivin and David. An ad for Poirier ties, at https://www.ebay.com/itm/322507924788
Dominique France was a Paris shirtmaker whose American branch held the license for Charvet ties in the US until the early 1980s when Charvet successfully got the rights back. You'll see "Denis Colban for Bergdorf Goodman" ties on ebay occasionally that date from the period when Charvet was not supposed to use its own name on ties it made for export to the US. Dominique France Christmas 1952 brochure at https://www.ebay.com/itm/184727597353
