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Thursday, June 12, 2014

Throw Back Preppy Thursdays L.L. Bean Chamois Cloth

 L.L. Bean Chamois Cloth
1960
 L.L. Bean Chamois Cloth
1958

 L.L. Bean Chamois Cloth
1969

 L.L. Bean Chamois Cloth
1982
 L.L. Bean Chamois Cloth
1982
If you didn't notice I'm a huge fan of  vintage  L.L. Bean advertisements. I had the privilege to view their 2014 fall/winter collection yesterday. Stay tuned guys for an upcoming post. I really like what they did with the Chamois shirt also known as "The Shammy". The Shammy is a L.L. Bean preppy and outdoor staple. It falls in the same group of must haves like L.L. Bean boots, Norwegians and camp socks. For 80 years, it has been a classic. Leon Leonwood Bean introduced the shirt in 1927 as a leatherette shirt, but  he renamed the shirt Bean Chamois Cloth Shirt in 1933. He also tested the shirt for two years in his usual hunting trips. What I liked the most from the Mr. Bean was that every product had to meet his expectations before coming out to the public. Chamois a soft cloth fabric made in imitation of chamois leather. The name “Chamois” or “Shammy” comes from the name of the  mountain goat  found in Eastern Europe. This goat leather was very supple and soft. It was mainly used in gloves in the late part of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. The name chamois was then applied to the thick  and tough yet soft cotton flannel shirts because it had similar characteristics. The shirt is perfect for the outdoors because it's thick, wind resistant, warm,. It features double needle stitching in key points like armholes, sleeves and side seams. Loving the prices on the advertisements!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for this wonderful walk down memory lane! My mother ordered my first Bean chamois cloth shirts from the 1969 catalog you show here, or from the '70 catalog, when I went off to college in Massachusetts in '70. She said something like this: "You'll find this is what they wear in the winter up there." I'm from North Carolina & so was my mother, but she loved clothes and she knew what she was talking about. I fell in love with Bean's chamois cloth shirts and I've been wearing them ever since. They're not what you'd call necessary in North Carolina but I wear them as much as I can in our mild winters. Frank in N.C.

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  2. P.S. I have enormous respect for the employees at L.L. Bean who are paid to come up with new plaids! They are wizards. I figure they do their work on a computer program now -- -- "Let's widen the red stripe by a quarter inch and see what it looks like." But however they do it, they produce a steady stream of plaids, inventive variations on classic color combinations, the way Bach used to come up with new fugues! Frank in N.C.

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