Blues For Men. (And the occasional gray and brown)

Chicago Mail Order, Fall/Winter 1936

Last time we noticed that women’s fashions in the second half of the Great Depression were quite colorful, despite the fact that we mostly have just those black and white pictures and movies to remember them by. Same catalog, different gender. Men weren’t so lucky. They don’t get as many color pages printed for them. And no wonder. Men were expected to dress soberly — more soberly than they had in the 1920s, in fact. So they get blue. Blue suits. Blue collars. Working clothes for working men. For variety, they get gray. Shoes in brown, blue, or black. And terrifyingly tall boots which look like they could stamp out forest fires. For the youthful fellow, there’s the two-toned “Olympic Champ” jacket for weekends, so sporty that it fastened up using a still-novel zipper. (Click to zoom in on the picture – it’s at bottom right). You had a choice of two color schemes… Blue trimmed with gray…or gray with blue. Yup, that just about summed it up for the guys.