If you've been wondering what the stylish Yankee beaus of yore used to wear during the Summer of 1941 when they plopped themselves down to read about the British occupation of Syria or the Nazi siege of Leningrad, then you can stop looking because we have the article right here - it is the summer fashion forecast from COLLIER'S MAGAZINE of May 24, 1941 - illustrated with no fewer than three color images:
"The newest color for vacation clothes is parchment, one of the natural tan shades. Don't be afraid that you'll look like a member of the street-cleaning department in a white linen suit. Even the Duke of Windsor wears one. It is ideal for vacation wear, as the jacket may be worn with colored slacks, the trousers with other light weight jackets.... For week-end and vacation wear you can choose from tropical worsteds, Palm Beach cloth, tropical weight flannels, linen, seersucker and tropical weight tweeds."
Attached are pictured six straw hats from a 1941 color ad promoting the Stetson Straws that appeared on the glossy pages of one of the more bourgeois American magazines just seven and a half months prior to the day when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and the bad-old days of World War II kicked-in for that rare breed of man known as homo-Americanus.
There can be no doubt that the fun-loving fashion-fan who was pictured sporting these organic chapeaus would soon find himself wearing one of Uncle Sam's over-laundered denim stitch-brims, peeling potatoes and remembering wistfully the day that this ad was shot.
We hope he survived the carnage. With her characteristic disregard for the unreasonable mandates of the prevailing fashion police hanging out for all to see, Elizabeth Hawes (1903 – 1971) scoffed with the deepest irreverence at the males of the species for being so thoughtless and blind in matters sartorial. Pointing out that men, who she compared to mice, don't have to wear ties, hats, heavy leather shoes or anything else that makes them uncomfortable, but do so purposelessly and out of fear...
Click here to read a 1929 article about the Dress-Reform Movement.
This article heralds the slippery slope in men's fashion. Our's is the era in which it is not odd to see billion-dollar businesses being run by men in flipflops and gym shorts - this is a far cry from how their grandfathers would have dressed were they in the same position. The well-respected fashion journalist (Henry L. Jackson, 1911 - 1948: co-founder of Esquire)
opined in this article that it was suitable for men to cease wearing the darker hues to the office and wear country tweeds; next stop - flipflops. | 
