Today’s magazine cover. The focus is obviously on the young woman, but the story is her flying outfit and the aircraft behind – it’s Bell P-39 Airacobra time! Evidently a wartime American magazine featuring one of the Women’s Air Service Pilots (WASPs) ferrying military aircraft in World War Two. Love it. James Kightly, Vintage Aero…
Tag: Clothing
Silk Wear – I
An illustration by Bruce Bomberger for a story by Laurence Critchell today, entitled “Three Days to Live” from the Saturday Evening Post of 1956. Bomberger took the attached text “Spilling the parachute onto the ground, he cut himself a silk headdress, like an arab’s”, and drew out the parachute to a highlight of the illustration,…
Changing Uniform Fashion
It is often forgotten that military formal uniforms are as much fashion and design driven as they are to provide uniformity to their wearers. One area where it is extremely obvious is in the development of women’s uniforms in the military air forces of World War Two. This is because of the newness of putting…
Fashion Plate Star
Today’s magazine cover. Found while looking for the Coca Cola advertisements of a couple of days ago, this provides quite a contrast to the dynamic ‘Rosie the Riveter’ posters discussed earlier. Lunch break aspirations? By ‘Valentine’ from Colliers magazine, August 1942. Found online here. James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer.
Leyendecker Double Take
Two versions of the same idea by Joseph Leyendecker. A follow up from his earlier Great War pair, here’s another double by American commercial artist Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874–1951). In this ‘Aviator with two boys’ it’s two different images and two different art media takes on a single idea. Note the differences in the dog…
Special Wings
Something a bit different today, and (yet) another area that could furnish enough interesting examples of the topic to be a blog all of its own. Lapel pins. Here we have Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) lapel pins. Interestingly, they feature three types of such pin, the stick pin, here featuring the CAC Wirraway aircraft’s name,…
Rugged Drones
That is ‘drones on a rug’, not tough drones. This is taken from an online article entitled ‘Lessons from the Afghan Women Who Weave Modern War into an Ancient Tradition’ on Artsy.net. [Photo by Kevin Sudeith, via Warrug.com] It’s very difficult to summarise the complex factors that have led to these rugs featuring the weapons…
Missing Fabric Man
You never know where the next one will come from*. Today it’s a recreated modern version of an historical quilt, both in an excellent little book by Bill Volckening called ‘Modern Roots – Today’s Quilts from Yesterday’s Inspiration’. Available from your quality bookseller, in our local case that would be Can Do Books, Melbourne, though…
Vinyl Class
The vinyl carry bag was a very popular item in the airline industry in the 1960s and 1970s. Today recreations are a popular retro item as well as originals (as seen here) for sale on e-Bay, Etsy, Gumtree and similar sites. I had one identical to this Trans-Australia Airlines (TAA) one that had been given…
J.C. Leyendecker Fashion Cover
Another thanks to the Today’s Inspiration Group. Here’s a rough of a pilot figure by well known commercial artist Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874–1951) from the Great War period, before the US entry into the war, when fashion catalogues would still be around. The detail in the final image detail dates to 1917 (the…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 