Minnesota artist Mark Larson debuted his line of Art-Necko ties in 1978. These were plastic, see-through ties, and the gimmick was that he filled them with various stuff.
As described in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (Nov 26, 1978):
There is the aquarium tie (a snail, a plant, some gravel and a puzzled guppie floating on the wearer's chest). The Paint-by-Number tie. The captured-flight tie (two broken toy airplanes and a dead moth). The floral arrangement tie (dirt and live plants). The regimental stripe (available in dirt and candy stripes or the more restrained hairline stripes, executed in human hair in gentle tones of rust, brown and gray).
The neon tie, however, is the current front-runner. Larson's favorite, it's a stunning red-and-blue creation that makes a glowing statement about the wearer—providing he's hooked up to a power source.
And these have nothing on the proposed ties. There could be—well, the world's loudest tie (armed with a tiny loudspeaker to broadcast jets taking off); the horror movie or Vincent Price model (containing dry ice, with tiny holes in the front to permit the wearer to trail wisps of fog); the Fit-to-be-Tied Tie (a self-inflating strait-jacket that takes over when you feel you are losing control), and the chow mein tie, inspired by the Seal-a-Meal machine that is basic to the Art-Necko process.
The cowboy tie
People magazine (Jan 15, 1979) listed a few more:
Railroad Tie has an HO-gauge track, pebbles and a miniature crossing sign inside.
Fishing Tackle features Goldfish crackers, a hook, sinker and a rubber worm. Vanity contains false eyelashes and phony fingernails. And for the ghoulish, there's Bones—scrubbed and boiled shortribs.
Inexplicable fashion fad: In 1962, San Francisco adman Howard Gossage came up with the idea of putting the faces of classical composers on sweatshirts and selling them for $4. Consumers could choose between Beethoven, Bach, or Brahms. He quickly sold around 60,000 of them.
If you want one of these sweatshirts today (at least, an original one), you'll have to pay significantly more. On eBay, the asking price ranges from $1500 all the way up to $9000.
In 1953, Reverend Bernard Kunkel of Bartelso, Illinois launched the Marilyke fashion movement. Dresses that were sufficiently modest, like the Virgin Mary would have worn (i.e. 'Marilyke'), were given a seal of approval in the form of a Marilyke tag they could display. The tags were "there to guide the Catholic girls."
It seems that only wedding dresses and formal gowns were tagged. As Kunkel noted, "There's not much to be done about bathing suits... We strongly disapprove of the trend in modern bathing suits."
1934: Coney Island police continued to crack down on male bathers who adopted the new fashion of topless bathing suits.
As for the female bathers:
Asked specifically about the fashionable trunk and brassiere top for ladies, the Coney Island lieutenant dropped the receiver, and apparently sought information from one of his assistants. He came back with the answer that he did not know what a brassiere is.
"But if it's indecent we won't allow it," he said.
Butler Baker invented a "clothes form" to prevent clothes from sticking to a person's body in hot weather. It consisted of a scaffolding of wire rings to be worn beneath a person's clothes.
In his 1927 patent, Baker asserted that these rings would "maintain clothing spaced from the body of the wearer at all times, thereby overcoming the disagreeable feature of the clothing sticking to the body during warm weather." Furthermore, "the device is simple in construction, light, and constructed in a manner whereby it will not interfere with the bending of the body."
It would be even better if it somehow had a fan at the bottom blowing air over your body. You might look weird wearing it, but at least you'd be cool.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.