Plotting a Comeback

For the last couple of centuries, western menswear has been largely shaped by what a select number of taste-makers declare to be correct, tasteful, and manly. It doesn't matter if they endorse fur collars, leather pumps, blue and gray suits, or lavender pajamas, when the demigods of fashion have spoken, the menswear industry, as a whole, puts its shoulder to the wheel, and makes a valiant effort to win some small sign of their icy approval    

Of course, what do you do, when the demigods of fashion decide to turn up their discerning noses at your branch of the industry? What if you no longer fit in with the aesthetics of the moment, or worse still, what if they dismiss your products as gauche? What were the experts in sequin embroidery to do, when Beau Brummell denounced the wholesale bedazzling of the tailor's craft?

Below is a letter to the editor of The Jeweler's Circular from August 1st 1922, addressing an article exploring the issue. As the public fascination with sports began to inform the laws of menswear, the trend-setters and taste-makers of the day decided that little glittering accessories should, for the time being, be kept to a minimum. Jewelers needed a plan to re-establish the market for men's jewelry, when the average Joe on the street had, out of respect for his favorite trend setters, firmly decided that most jewelry was no longer "correct." 

Diamond Dragnet

I've found that most fashion industry journals from the 1920s are quiet affairs. They publish the latest trends in lapel notches, and the best ways to arrange silk neckties in windows. The height of drama, on their well ordered pages, might be a little coy feuding between fashion scholars and adventurous trendsetters, or perhaps a hint of a copyright infringement scandal. 

Not so, with The Jeweler's Circular! That robust periodical is glittering with more drama than a rack of dime novels! Jewel heists, automat holdups, car chases, cavalier criminals who give their victims sporting chances at escape, bugged hotel rooms, and detectives in disguise, The Jeweler's Circular has it all in spades. 

Here's one example that is the stuff of Hollywood classics!

Vogue

In 1921, a men's jewelry company moved their headquarters from 5th Avenue to Madison Avenue. Their name was "Vogue" Jewelry for Men, and their logo includes a typeface, strangely similar to the one used today, on the cover of a certain famous magazine. According to the ad below, printed in an issue of The Haberdasher, the store was run by four brothers, and was founded in 1890. I was curious to find out more about "Vogue," so I did a little digging:  

I unearthed another ad for the store in a 1908 issue of The Clothier and Furnisher. It appears that they were not a retailer, but rather, a jewelry house, producing their own lines of fobs, pins, links, clasps, and buttons:

After some more digging, I found the following notice, printed in The Boy's Outfitter from 1920. It describes "Vogue" as a wholesale endeavor: 

But what became of them? It took a bit more searching to find information from later than 1921, but after poking around for a while, I discovered two Vogel Brothers Company. inc. patents from 1926, listed in the Index of Patents Issued from the United States Patent and Trademark Office:

Earrings? Did I read that correctly? For sailors, perhaps? 

Unfortunately, after the patent listings, a clear trail (at least on the internet) seemed to run out. and I can't seem to find any images of the jewelry that the produced. Perhaps more information will turn up.