Thursday, September 10, 2009

Sexy Pulp Fashion




We collect vintage paperbacks for their great pulpish titles, kitschy cover blurbs, and popping illustration art covers. With the sexy digest-sized paperbacks produced in the late 1940's and early 1950's, there's a little something extra to appreciate. It's minor, but it's a cool thing to look at when you're collecting and that's the amazing fashions the artists painted on femme fatales, gun molls, and hillbilly hussies. Every vintage paperback line occasionally featured covers with beautiful women in amazing fashions. Sexy digests in their prime did this as a matter of course, as did their counterparts, sexy detective magazines. Incidentally, much of the cover art on sexy digests was also used on sexy detective magazines and vice versa. The kinds of fashions I'm talking about include waist-cinching belts, wiggle dresses, pencil skirts, super high heels, berets, and more. So enjoy this little mish-mash of sexy digests and note the hyper femininity of the fashions of the era. I wouldn't want to have been a woman in the 1950's except for the fashion. "Room and Dame" features cover art by George Gross. "Man Crazy" and "Emotions of Fire" cover art by Rudy Nappi. "Cutie" also probably a Nappi, but I'm not sure. "Sleepy Time Honey" looks like a Howell Dodd, but I'm also not sure.

1 comment: