Hey tumblr, have you ever thought to yourself, “dang it’d sure be cool to set a project in something other than the current times,” but when you go to look up references on google, all you get is a horrible historical pastiche of days gone by?
Well boy howdy, do I have a reference for you!
The Wishbook Web has scans of entire consumer catalogs from past decades, ranging from the early 30s to the late 80s. Each catalog has pages upon pages of reference of clothing, accessories, and shoes for all ages, as well as toys, gadgets, and all sorts of junk that you might buy for yourself or your loved ones. While the website exclusively has Christmas catalogs, the photos and illustrations show products that you could use year-round.
SO MANY REFS OMG…
I’d like to add on top of this that all of the issues of Life Magazine (1936-1972) are available via Google Books and they are just a wealth of photography, advertisement, culture, and history. There are just some really neat glimpses into history here, especially powerful when you browse through and you can see the issues leading up to wars, and then finally the first issue after a war begins—and you know what all is going to happen (I recommend the Dec. 22, 1941 issue, it’s such a strange mix of shocking reaction to news, propaganda, hope and advertisements that act like nothing’s going on).
It’s not like looking at a history book and just reading a timeline, it’s the reactions of real people at that time, in print. It’s so neat!