Men's Fashions: Gray Flannel Suits

A CALL TO BARE ARMS

Despite Manhattan's unbearably hot and steamy summertime weather, city fashion czars, claimed the New York Daily News in July 1951, continued to insist that men endure the dog days with their shirtsleeves covered. Hot as hell and not wanting to take it anymore, a Daily News columnist urged "outright rebellion against any and all social edicts which say a guy has to pull a hot jacket over a carcass which already, probably, is steaming like a 1908 Maxwell. Down with any heartless females and etiquette fanatics who'd still like to see us looking like boiled lobsters and feeling like steamed clams." According to a July Gallup poll, however, jacketless men already had the sympathies of seven out of ten women surveyed. Yet Time magazine reported that the Daily News crusade was having little impact in revising lunchtime couture for the hot and hungry...

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