Featured Antique Counter Sign for a Tailor Featuring "The Dude"

I dunno...but I like it, too. The exaggerated pose is part of the appeal...tho' I cannot say exactly why. Thanks!

 

A bit like Eustace Tilley, The New Yorker magazine's mascot.

 

Are the yappy dogs part of the look? Wonder why you have to take off the glove to use your monocle.

 

First time I ever heard that fellow had a name!

 

Cool Book. Is that a tear in his clothing near his crotch?
Maybe that is why he needs a tailor.

 

This site is a veritable trove of information!

 

Bless you Book for bringing some antique advertising to our site !

 

I believe there was a poem called "The Dude" from the 1800's.

 

"Dude" money, is good money!

 

Wikipedia discusses the history of the use of the word "dude".

An interesting tidbit:
"The term "dude" may have derived from the 18th-century word "doodle", as in "Yankee Doodle Dandy"."
EDIT: Yet THIS 1883 Chicago Tribune article says that "dude" is a corruption of dodo.

 

Dudes, dandies, dashers, and fops.

 

From "The Magnificent Ambersons":

Trousers with a crease were considered plebeian; the crease proved that the garment had lain upon a shelf, and hence was “ready-made”; these betraying trousers were called “hand-me-downs,” in allusion to the shelf. In the early ‘eighties, while bangs and bustles were having their way with women, that variation of dandy known as the “dude” was invented: he wore trousers as tight as stockings, dagger-pointed shoes, a spoon “Derby,” a single-breasted coat called a “Chesterfield,” with short flaring skirts, a torturing cylindrical collar, laundered to a polish and three inches high, while his other neckgear might be a heavy, puffed cravat or a tiny bow fit for a doll’s braids. With evening dress he wore a tan overcoat so short that his black coat-tails hung visible, five inches below the over-coat; but after a season or two he lengthened his overcoat till it touched his heels, and he passed out of his tight trousers into trousers like great bags. Then, presently, he was seen no more, though the word that had been coined for him remained in the vocabularies of the impertinent.

 

That's fabulous. How did you ever find?

Debora

 

I love it!

 

From an 1889-1890 Janesville City Directory -





https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ADSYKXSAN453ED9D/pages/AZRGIPWCBTVZ7U9D