| Some
roughly contemporary Modess ads: "Mother . . . don't be quaint" - Kotex vs. Modess - Early Modess newspaper ads See the Kotex Quest
menstrual pad deodorant.
|
Modess menstrual
pad ad
|
| This highly (Art-)
Decorated lady reflects similar
women in ads of the 1930s that cross the
bounds of high and low: haute couture
and, um, menstrual pads. Johnson & Johnson, which made Modess from cotton - a short history from the company - competed with the Cellucotton of Kotex, made from trees. The rivalry lasted decades, Modess finally quitting. But Kotex could match Modess on haughty women. Maybe women were just haughtier then. No, wait, it was the Depression. But it hardly touched these people, even in Germany. |
| Below:
The black-and-white full-page ad measures
10 1/2 x 14" (26.7 x 35.6 cm). |
Below:
Right smack on the back of the Modess ad
stands this ad for Selby Arch Preserver
Shoes. I chopped off the right half. The
ad is colored. |
 Below: An apparently popular illustrator of the 1930s, Dynevor Rhys signed his name in the top of the gray vertical stripe to the left of the woman. Didn't he have his way with "Y"s? |
Look at the similar poses,
the frosty
expressions (see the faces,
enlarged, below the ad and the one at the
bottom of the page) and fashionable.
expensive-looking clothes.
They could sell, well, fashionable,
expensive looking clothes as well - or
better than - menstrual pads and shoes.
But they showed that all women needed such
lowly items. What's that shoe peeking into the ad at lower right? Yikes! It'll fry that frost: it's called the Pagan! \   |
 |
Above:
Our ads appeared in 1930, Modigliani expired in 1920, and Art Deco lived from about 1920 to the 1940s. Did the artist influence that suspiciously similar art movement? Or was it the Zeitgeist? Below: For your amusement I superimposed the (artificially colored) "S"s in the bottom "Modess" to show what I suspected: the letters don''t match, are hand drawn, and are beautiful. The News of the World long ago accused me of having too much time on my hands. |
 |
|
| For
dessert, below, a
fabulously frosty
face. German women could
read die neue linie (the new line)
magazine from 1929 to 1943. German
Wikipedia calls it the first German
lifestyle magazine - yes, Germans
use the English word lifestyle. "Life"
doesn't seem to fit these two, having been
created in a lab in a castle basement on a
lightning-charged night. |
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