Braemar number

Harrods News Spetember 1937

Shelf Appeal has accumulated a few pieces of ephemera advertising the Braemar wool clothing label. They used fashion illustration very well over the years. And pretty fashion pictures are as catnip to Shelf Appeal.

This promotional booklet was to launch ‘Harrods New Collection of Braemar Sportswear’ on 6th September 1937. 12 pages of great illustrations with no corners cut in production. Well, it is from 1930s and Harrods – who were more classy than blingy in those days.

I have no idea who the fashion illustrator is. The style is quite American and a smidgen old fashioned for the date; the height of stylised, painterly fashion illustrators like Eric, Vertes and Berard. These are images to sell clothes, not magazines. Yet they are very handsome. Of red-lipped ladies taking the air in their Braemar sports numbers. Off for a hike in the Scottish heather, no doubt or a round of golf, to walk the dogs or even just to smoke a cigarette.

Braemar were based in Hawick, Scotland. A real centre of knitwear production, then and now. And as we move toward the end of September and the lovely autumn cool rolls sneakily in, a light covering of cashmere or, well, cashmere, seems very much the thing.

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