The working life of Museum of London

Some weeks ago I spent a few, very pleasant days looking through Victor Stiebel’s press books at the V&A’s Archive of Art & Design. I came across an entire page from an unnamed magazine pasted between two clippings dated February and March 1934.

If the photo was better (apologies, I took my own camera, which is not performing well in low light conditions, or maybe I am not) you could read, next to a drawing by Marcel Vertès, the lyrics of a Cole Porter song. They seem to represent the words of a loving but somewhat exasperated society mother trying to rouse her bright young daughter who needs to spruce herself up for dinner at the Berkeley. The song shows that product placement is nothing new, Porter has sprinkled it with the names of many contemporary beauty aids and clothing brands. Some of the less obvious references stirred the little Inspector Columbo in me that is always waiting to come out (or should this be Hercule Poirot seeing that we are time-travelling to 1934?).

Before I type out the lyrics in full, I would like to ask a favour. If you happen to have issues of the British Harper’s Bazaar at your disposal, please check the early 1934 issues. I have not had time to go to a library to do this myself. For reasons that shall become clearer later, I am pretty sure we are talking Harper’s rather than Vogue (a check of our Vogue copies was inconclusive as we don’t have a complete run for 1934).

Without further ado, here it is:

Dressing Daughter for Dinner

Come, awake, fair daughter,
Here’s the floris toilet water
And the perstick which I bought for you at boots,
Bring along that little jar o’
Velva cream, valaze mascara,
Your new eye-tebs and of course your baby poutz.

My, your lids look bad, oh
Where’s the persian blue eye-shadow
And the ruby cream to add to your success?
Oh, I know it’s hard to waken
But your side-car has been shaken
And it’s time that mother’s pet should start to dress.

Wear your parti-pantiecles,
(I love these modern fantasies)
Is that aristoc or one of kira sheer?
Your effect should be fantastic
In that tu-way stretch elastic
And they’re sure to like your kestos brassière.

Why not try those dolcis shoes,
Not the browns, the wedgwood blues,
And that sexy airplane bustle, just for show.
In your watermelon stiebel
You’ll make baba beaton feeble,
And I know your mink gills collar
Will make mona simply holler.
Are your ear-clips firmly on?
Dear, you look a little wan,
Why not add a blush-rose measure
And, to give your mother pleasure
Pause a moment and rehearse,
How to swing your tree-bark zipper purse,
And, darling, don’t forget
To attach your new changette
Wear your eggplant velvet gloves,
(That the colour mother loves)
And your moonglow muskrat muff,
Are you sure you’re warm enough?
Where’s your dinner? At the berkeley?
Then you’d better wear your sparkly.
Now you’re forty minutes late, it’s time to go.

Lovely non? Apart from anything else I am quite intrigued by the whole lower case thing. Let’s get straight to work on the first paragraph:

Floris toilet water is easy but what about the perstick bought at Boots? The name, sort of, gives it away. It refers to a deodorant in a brand new format, the brainchild of the owner of ‘Feminine Products, Inc, New York’. (Do not get too distracted by the ‘bachelor’ girl with the cigarette, it is the left column you want to focus on!)

Marvin Small’s invention was patented in August 1934. Below is a longer quote from his patent application submitted two years earlier (and the accompanying drawing), which suggests that carrying around ‘toilet accessories’ still had a bit of novelty value.

According to the present invention, the perspiration inhibiting composition in solid form but of a soft wax-like consistency is molded [sic] in the shape of an elongated pencil or stick and is housed in a container which acts as a means for holding the pencil during application of the preparation and also as a means for completely closing the pencil when not in use. It can be carried in a ladies’ hand bag in the same way that lip sticks and other toilet accessories are now carried.

Mr Small seems to have invented a few more things and apparently made enough money to retire aged 45. I presume he was a man who did not mince words as his 1955 self-help book was entitled How to Make More Money.

I wonder whether the editor of Harper’s Bazaar put any restrictions on Cole Porter. Or perhaps he himself decided to mention both Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein products in the fifth line? The to our ears somewhat unfortunately named Velva cream was Arden’s concoction and appears in the 1937 price list in our collection.

We also have an Elizabeth Arden brochure enticingly entitled The Quest of the Beautiful. Here we learn that Velva is not only ‘velvety’ but also ‘nourishing without fattening’ and therefore perfect for the ‘full face’. Valaze was Helena Rubinstein’s invention and the name was used not just for products but also for her beauty ‘institutes’.

Eye-tebs are a brand of false eye lashes but the spelling is slightly mystifying. In New York you could have had your lashes fitted at the Ey-Teb salon on Fifth Avenue.  I do not know whether an ‘e’ was added for the English market (the 1939 advertisement below suggests otherwise), or whether we are talking about a different company.

Baby poutz has so far eluded me. I presume it refers to some lip product but to what exactly? In the American version the product is replaced with Baby Touch, which seems to have been a hair remover (and you thought we invented all this kind of stuff).

American version? I hear you ask. Yep, google books told me that the US edition of Harper’s published alternative lyrics in the same year. So I traipsed to the Barbican library to consult Robert Kimball’s vast compilation of Cole Porters complete lyrics first published in 1983 (you will want page 197). I learned that, sadly, no music survives (if it ever existed) and that Porter and/or Harper’s must have thought that the (female) population of neither nation would ‘get’ the other’s brands. For the American market the first paragraph/verse was altered so that the very English Floris was replaced by Coty, Valaze by Winx and Eye-Tebs by Ne-Tebs (artificial nails). I wonder in which order the songs were commissioned (somehow I think they were a commission): the American first (which I suspect) or the British?

I will continue the product matching quest in my next post when we shall be tackling underwear and novelty jewellery. In the meantime, if you can enlighten me about baby poutz, please get in touch.