Celebrity Endorsement

You don't often see celebrity endorsement, or celebrity modeling, in menswear ads from the 19-teens. Here is a rare example of both, from a 1919 issue of The Underwear and Hosiery Review. 

What's wrong with bein' confidant?

When you're dressed in your Cooper's Bennington Spring Needle Underwear, your humble towel instantly transforms into a plush red carpet, and the locker room becomes your summer palace!

The more I look at the illustration in this ad from the May 1919 Underwear and Hosiery Review, the more amusing it gets. Check out that moody stare, the young fellow in the background is giving our hero. He probably just wishes his underwear were half as fabulous. 

According to the small type under the illustration, it was also printed in The Saturday Evening Post. 

Assurance

Yep. This gentleman has on his confidance-boosting Globe Trowserseat Union Suit, and is ready to have a serious talk with your manager, and your manager's manager, if need be. 

Behold the Bohemian Youth

This article from a 1919 issue of The Haberdasher provides a wonderful sketch of a perennial type: The glassy-eyed youth with poetic sensibilities, who drifts through life in a state of rapt abstraction, passively gaining the admiration of all aspiring bohemians he encounters, and thoroughly confounding everyone else.