Colour Me Bad

There isn't a theme to this post, but I promise that it will not feature any animals. All of the following illustrations have been discovered during the last few days.

I've always had a soft spot for 1970s fashions, particularly the neo-Victorian style of Jon Pertwee's Doctor Who and Peter Wyngarde's Jason King. However, these migraine-inducing designs from Sewing Illustrated show a very different sartorial zeitgeist:

The woman looks a little uncomfortable, and it's not just because the man's hand is dangerously close to her left breast. She knows that she looks utterly ridiculous.

 

"A colour-co-ordinated lawn rake? Thanks Dad!" 

Designs like these are enough to make anyone yearn for the age of clothing coupons and post-war austerity. These pictures, from two decades earlier, show a very different world:

 

"I say. Awfully well done Mr Fuller. Your merrows have surpahhhssed themselves this year..."

"Ebsolutely splindid! Congretulations!"

Did these people fight for a world of patchwork denim and yellow garden rakes? No. But somehow this period was the midwife to the age of Garry Glitter, Jimmy Savile and the Bay City Rollers.

A decade earlier, the stakes were even higher than gardening competitions:

It all has me longing for a quieter, more innocent age, before people said "Yay!" and "LOL". A time when gentlemen of commerce would have to sit in silence during train journeys. Perhaps the 1880s:

 

This 1886 Boy's Own illustration looks as if it's recording the very first use of a smartphone, but actually the young man is looking at a portrait of his recently-deceased sister. In my desire to escape to the past, I'd forgotten about consumption, rickets and polio. I wouldn't have made it to adulthood.

Finally, my favourite cover this week. Did you know that Japanese women used to look like Elizabeth Taylor?