Sunday 29 January 2012

Vintage Illustration

Any fans of Mad Men know that the 50's and 60's were the heydays of American advertising.  At the same time, the era also witnessed the beginning of the slow demise of story illustration in popular magazines. The women in the ads were as over-idealized as they are today, either as content little domestic housekeeper...





or at best, sophisticated lady about town...








Mind you, if she got the chance to get all dressed up for the evening, she wouldn't appreciate hubby screwing it up by getting a flat tire. This might earn him a reddening of his ears at least (though his body language suggests he might prefer  his butt reddened)...


She might even decide he needed to appreciate how much hard work housekeeping really is...


But, alas, no spanking.
So - as a fan of retro illustration, as well as retro spanking, I thought it would be fun to attempt an ad illo that at least had a sneaky suggestion of spanking attached to it...


It would make me want to run out and buy a new hairbrush.
Or three.

8 comments:

  1. Lovely sequence of photos, culminating in the best of course!

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  2. Due to my habit of quickly scanning web pages I almost missed that the last one was yours! Nicely done! ;-)

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  3. I do love illustrations, but I remember thinking Rockwell was pretty square when I was a snobby kid. I don't now...
    TV Dinners used to go for 98 cents back in '58. Now, you can get something slightly better than that for two bucks. TV Dinners used to be the equivalent of about ten bucks a pop...about an hour at minimum wage. I guess only mad men's wives could afford them.
    I think Betts, in Mad Men, is the essential bored housewife of the second wave feminist paradigm. She is such a powerful person, maybe even more than Don is, but she has absolutely nothing to do. She doesn't even raise the kids.
    Really nice book-cover or whatever on the last picture. Talk about nice illustrations - plus layout and script and stuff.

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  4. Loved your vintage hairbrush ad. I can just imagine the feelings felt back in the day, thumbing through a "borrowed" copy of mom's Cosmoploitian and seeing that ad....wow!

    maxrr

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    1. thanks - I have a couple more in mind along the same lines.

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  5. Looking forward to them! I do think that this particular use of the hairbrush (back then) was fully in the minds of the designers, but never truly capitalized on by the marketing dept...thank you for correcting that oversight>

    respectfully,
    maxrr

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  6. Brilliant faux vintage hairbrush ad--I just posted it on my blog. Awesome, very creative and clever:-)

    Dave
    CherryRedReport

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  7. Very nice drawing, that hairbrush is frighteningly big !!!

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