The Kuppenheimer Conundrum
While poking around online looking for suitable imagery to illustrate the Facebook event for Justin’s talk on consumerism in the late 19th and early 20th century, I ended up with a print advert for the Kuppenheimer menswear brand. Founded in 1876 by immigrant Bernard Kuppenheimer (who had opened his first clothing store in 1852), by the end of the century the company was turning over almost $1 million and employed 2,000 workers in shops and factories. During the First World War they made uniforms for the US Army. Things faded in the mid-20th century, though Kuppenheimer apparently supplied Rod Serling’s suits in the 1960s TV series The Twilight Zone, and the brand continued trading until 1997. During its heyday they commissioned illustrator J.C. Leyendecker to produce hundreds of paintings for adverts, and it was this seam that I was mining.
What prompts me to mention all of this is that I noticed the image I ended up using (see above) featured a young man apparently sporting an NSC tie. As I looked further through the Leyendecker Kuppenheimer archives it struck me that in fact an extremely high proportion (though admittedly not quite all) of his male figures appeared to be Club members. Now, a cynic may say that Leyendecker was simply instructed to use a certain palette (indeed the adverts may have been designed to be reproduced using just two spot colours, black and red) but any sane man can see that there is something more significant going on. Given that the paintings were made a good 80 years before the founding of the Club, the nature of this conspiracy is clearly quite complex. Consequently the research efforts will prove costly and your generous donations are appreciated. (We accept most major currencies, as well as bullion, property, livestock and credit at Berry Bros. & Rudd, Lock & Co. Hatters and J.J. Fox’s cigar emporium.)
