This is an ad from Max Factor Cosmetics in September 1963. The name of the campaign is “Once Upon a Red”. In the picture, the costume is by Bill Blass of Mautice Rensner, and the jewelry is by David Webb.
I chose this ad because it displays the clothes and accessories in details and it even covers both female and male dressing style at the times with a fully dressed man vaguely showing in the background. Since it was a promote for popular cosmetics at the time, the female image that it represented must had been a dressing role model for the girls in that time period. It reveals essential aesthetics of early 1960s’ fashion.
Since this was a time period that sporty wear or unisex clothing hadn’t been fully noticed or at least highly appreciated like nowadays by the market, the style to me is somehow outdated and restricted. I could time this was a time period that women mainly considered their ideal selves in dresses and formal wear. My focus when I designed for women shifts more into designing unisex clothing and sporty wear, which falls against to the 1960s’ trend.
This was a cover magazine photo from Playboy Magazine in September 1977. The main title was “The Big Ten’s Best”.
I chose this image because it forms big contrast to the previous image I showed. In this image, the woman are dressed in sportswear but in very feminine and seductive manner, their poses are very bold and their bodies are very stretched out compared to the model’s much more conservative and restrictive pose in previous ad. It can be recognized a significant mark point of the introduction of sportswear in female fashion. Further, here, sportswear is not here to suppress gender role but to use it to highlight woman bodies and curves. From my point of view, in this photo, women are sexy in a powerful and dominant way.
In this image, the clothing style is closer to what I will normally appreciate when I design.The introduction of football shoulder pads and jersey blurs out the boundaries between men’s fashion and female fashion. The definition of unisex is further examined and testified in this ad, cause the girls under tight men’s football jersey are even more sexual attractive out of their exposed feminine features.
