Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:11:59.933Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Collars and Consumers: Changing Images of American Manliness and Business

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Carole Turbin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Detachable collars, essential to men’s appearance from the 1840s to the 1920s, have left a lasting legacy: the term ‘white collar’ and the “Arrow Man,” the centerpiece of Arrow collar advertisements from 1907 until 1931. The Arrow Man was the visual representation of the “New Man,” and Arrow collars were preserved in American culture through the lyrics of a 1934 Cole Porter song, “You’re the Top.” Both the Arrow collar and the Arrow Man derived from business decisions that reflected emerging and changing American consumer tastes and markets, an expanding middle class, and shifts in culture, especially in new ideal images of manliness that were less class-based, contributing to Americans’ impression that social distinctions were more blurred than in the past. The Arrow Man embodied in a single compelling image the resolution of social contradictions that persisted beneath the increased similarity of men of different backgrounds.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 1 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Beauty and Business , September 2000 , pp. 507 - 535
Copyright
Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Adams, Samuel Hopkins. “Grandfather and the Montague Collar.” The New Yorker, 1950, reprinted in Troy—The Collar City of the World, Cluett, Peabody, and Co. Collection, Rensselaer County Historical Society, Troy, N.Y. Google Scholar
Adweek. June 1984. Google Scholar
“Arrow Advertising: A Study in Consistency.” Tide: The Newsmagazine for Advertising Executives (13 April 1951), 44—46.Google Scholar
Baron, Ava. “Acquiring Manly Competence: The Demise of Apprenticeship and the Remasculinization of Printers’ Work.” In Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, ed. Carnes, Mark C. and Griffen, Clyde. Chicago, 1990, pp. 152—63.Google Scholar
Bazzini, Luigi. Memories of Mistresses: Recollections from a Life in New York. New York, 1986.Google Scholar
Bederman, Gail. Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago, 1995.Google Scholar
Benson, Susan Porter. Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940. Urbana, Ill., 1986.Google Scholar
Blewett, Mary H. “Manhood and the Market: The Politics of Gender and Class among the Textile Workers of Fall River, Massachusetts, 1870-1880.” In Work Engendered, ed. Ava, Baron. Ithaca, N.Y., 1991, pp. 92—113.Google Scholar
Breward, Christopher. The Culture of Fashion: A New History of Fashionable Dress. Manchester, England, 1995.Google Scholar
Bushman, Richard. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York, 1993.Google Scholar
The Clothing Gazette. Jan.-Nov. 1901 Google Scholar
“Cluett, Peabody.” Fortune (Feb. 1937), 113—27.Google Scholar
Cluett Peabody, and Co. Collection. Rensselaer County Historical Society, Troy, N.Y. Google Scholar
“Collars as Money Makers,” reprinted from “Men’s Wear,” by Cluett, Peabody, and Co., Inc. Google Scholar
Colle, Doriece. Collars, Stocks, Cravats: A History and Costume Dating Guide to Civilian Men’s Neckpieces, 1655-1900. Emmaeus, Pa., 1972.Google Scholar
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. “The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the Twentieth Century.” In Material Culture Studies in America, ed. Thomas, J. Schlereth. Nashville, Tenn., 1982, pp. 222—36.Google Scholar
Craik, Jennifer. The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion. New York, 1994.Google Scholar
DeVault, Ileen A. Sons and Daughters of Labor: Class and Clerical Work in Turn-of-the-Century Pittsburgh. Ithaca, N.Y., 1990.Google Scholar
Fox, Stephen. “The Origins of American Advertising: The Age of Lasker,” Adweek (June 1984), 26—35.Google Scholar
Gamber, Wendy. The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860-1930. Urbana, Ill., 1997.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. Gender Advertisements. New York, 1979.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Judith L. “The Female Aesthetic Community.” Poetics Today 14, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 143—63.Google Scholar
Gorn, Elliott J. The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America. Ithaca, N.Y., 1986.Google Scholar
Greeley, Horace, et al. The Great Industries of the United States. Hartford, Conn., 1873.Google Scholar
Green, Nancy L. Ready-to-Wear, Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York. Durham, N.C., 1997.Google Scholar
Hayner, Rutherford. Troy and Rensselaer County, New York. New York, 1925.Google Scholar
Hyman, Richard and Price, Robert, eds. The New Working Class? White-Collar Workers and Their Organizations. New York, 1983.Google Scholar
Kasson, John F. Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Kidwell, Claudia B., and Margaret, C. Christman. Suiting Everyone: The Democratization of Clothing in America. Washington, D.C., 1974.Google Scholar
Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America: A Cultural History. New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Kocka, Jurgen. White Collar Workers in America, 1890-1940: A Social Political History in International Perspective. Beverly Hills, Calif., 1980.Google Scholar
Leach, William. Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. New York, 1993.Google Scholar
Leach, William. “Strategists of Display and the Production of Desire.” In Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America 1880-1920, ed. Bronner, Simon J.. New York, 1989.Google Scholar
Lewis, Susan Ingalls. “Beyond Horatio Alger: Breaking Through Gendered Assumptions about Business ‘Success’ in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America.” Business and Economic History 24, no. 1 (Fall 1995): 97—105.Google Scholar
McCracken, Grant. Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Bloomington, Ind., 1990.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright. White Collar: The American Middle Classes. New York, 1957.Google Scholar
Montgomery, David. “Workers’ Control of Machine Production in the Nineteenth Century.” Labor History 17 (Fall 1976): 485—509.Google Scholar
Morske, James. “And it all began with one woman.” In The Arrow Man: Collar City Chic. Catalogue for exhibition at Russell Sage College Gallery Troy, N.Y., Fall 1987.Google Scholar
Murphy, Michael J. “Arrow’s Eros? Homoeroticism and J. C. Leyendecker’s Arrow Collar Man,” unpub. paper, Fall 1999. New York News Record, 1920-1924.Google Scholar
Peiss, Kathy. Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture. New York, 1998.Google Scholar
Perrot, Phillippe. Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Richard, Bienvenue. Princeton, N.J., 1994.Google Scholar
Phillips, Max. “An Unusual Layout Simplifies a Complicated Advertising Story: How the Van Heusen Checkerboard Came into Being.” Printers’ Ink: A Journal for Advertising 125, no. 9 (19 Nov. 1923), 33—36.Google Scholar
Roodenburg, Herman. “How to Sit, Stand or Walk: Towards a Historical Anthropology of Dutch Paintings and Prints.” In Looking at Dutch Art, ed. Wayne, Franits. New York, 1997.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, Roy. Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920. New York, 1983.Google Scholar
Rotundo, E. Anthony. “Learning about Manhood: Gender Ideals and the Middle-Class Family in Nineteenth-Century America.” In Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940, ed. Mangan, J. A. and James, Walvin. New York, 1987, 35—51.Google Scholar
Ryan, Mary P. Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865. New York, 1981.Google Scholar
Schoeffler, O. E., and William, Gale. Esquire’s Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Men’s Fashions. New York, 1973.Google Scholar
Scranton, Philip. “The Transition from Custom to Ready-to-Wear Clothing in Philadelphia, 1890-1930.” Textile History 25, no. 2 (1994): 243—73.Google Scholar
Segal, Eric. “Norman Rockwell and the Fashioning of American Masculinity.” Art Bulletin 77, no. 4 (1996): 633—46.Google Scholar
Sennett, Richard. The Fall of Public Man. New York, 1976.Google Scholar
Strasser, Susan. Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York, 1982.Google Scholar
Turbin, Carole. Working Women of Collar City: Gender, Class, and Community in Troy, New York, 1864-86. Urbana, Ill., 1992.Google Scholar
Weise, Arthur James. The City of Troy and Its Vicinity. Troy, N.Y., 1886.Google Scholar
Williams-Mitchell, Christobel. Dressed for the Job: The Story of Occupational Costume. New York, 1982.Google Scholar