Oh, no, no, no... this was defintiely not the Bus Station Creep line. Mantique had that market sewn up tight.
This was as close as catalogs dared get to explicitly targeting the gay market of the time. No snarkiness here, either. It's fascinating entirely from a historical perspective, the kind of tone the copy-writers used, aiming for "the assertive male who knows fashion."
Further, the photographers deliberately avoided selecting the tougher-looking men who usually conveyed a ruggedly masculine archetype during that era... the kind of guy that Joe Average could look at and think, "Yeah! If I buy this polyester knit shirt, somehow I'll start looking more like him!"
Instead they chose younger, more sensitive-looking models a very different demographic would look at and think much the same thing.
Number Three, sporting the floral print shirt looks very much like Rudolph Nuryev the ballet star who was a HUGE heart-throb in the gay world during the late 60s and most of the 70s. Even by today's standards, Nuryev would be considered a knock-out. Trim, toned, incredible muscle definition, cheekbones that would cut paper, and utterly shameless.
On a related point, let's all breathe a huge sigh of relief the "Double-Feature" look never caught on. Even on a conventionally attractive model it looks awful.
Due to recent events, I'm limiting comments to google account holders only. Sorry if you're a decent person affected by this but the spam has gotten weird.
Oh, no, no, no... this was defintiely not the Bus Station Creep line. Mantique had that market sewn up tight.
ReplyDeleteThis was as close as catalogs dared get to explicitly targeting the gay market of the time. No snarkiness here, either. It's fascinating entirely from a historical perspective, the kind of tone the copy-writers used, aiming for "the assertive male who knows fashion."
Further, the photographers deliberately avoided selecting the tougher-looking men who usually conveyed a ruggedly masculine archetype during that era... the kind of guy that Joe Average could look at and think, "Yeah! If I buy this polyester knit shirt, somehow I'll start looking more like him!"
Instead they chose younger, more sensitive-looking models a very different demographic would look at and think much the same thing.
Number Three, sporting the floral print shirt looks very much like Rudolph Nuryev the ballet star who was a HUGE heart-throb in the gay world during the late 60s and most of the 70s. Even by today's standards, Nuryev would be considered a knock-out. Trim, toned, incredible muscle definition, cheekbones that would cut paper, and utterly shameless.
On a related point, let's all breathe a huge sigh of relief the "Double-Feature" look never caught on. Even on a conventionally attractive model it looks awful.