Images from a child’s picture book help explain
men’s style options when buying Arrow shirts

Men with long necks, or short necks; young men or old­er learned from Life Mag­a­zine, Novem­ber 18, 1940, that Cluett, Peabody & Co made shirts with dif­fer­ences — the Sus­sex, The Bruce, The Dale and the Gor­don Oxford. The adver­tis­ing agency cap­tured the dif­fer­ences with a com­bi­na­tion of illus­tra­tions and short cap­tions. The facts are laid out sim­ply but with humour.  

Arrow Shirts had a style for every neck

G is for Giraffe
Men with long necks may look giraffe-like in the wrong col­lar. They can side-step this in Arrow’s Sus­sex shirt. Its wide­spread col­lar makes necks look short­er, hand­somer! $2.

B is for Beaver
Men with short necks may look beaver-like in the wrong col­lar. They can avoid this with the Arrow Bruce shirt. Its low band, long-point col­lar makes necks look longer, thin­ner! $2.

H is for Hip­po
Men whose col­lars wrin­kle like a hippo’s neck should get Arrow Dale. Its col­lar won’t wilt all day! Like all Arrows, Dale is San­forized-Shrunk (fab­ric-shrink­age less than 1%).  $2.50

P is for Pea­cock.
Men feel proud as pea­cocks in Arrow Shirts! Arrow’s exclu­sive “Mito­ga” fig­ure-fit is shaped the way a man is build. Young men pick Arrow Gor­don Oxford, with but­ton-down col­lar. $2.

On the subject of men’s attire…

Men’s corsets — appar­ent­ly an absolute neces­si­ty —were adver­tised in the Sep­tem­ber 1903 issue of The Delin­eator, an Amer­i­can women’s mag­a­zine of the late 19th and ear­ly 20th centuries.
Advertisement for Arrow Shirts tells buyers how to buy the right style to fit different neck

This menswear advertisement should attract women readers. That’s important for the Arrow shirt manufacturer because, as reported in a 2012 survey by men’s fashion website Style Pilot,  two-thirds of men surveyed have their clothes chosen for them by their wife or partner. It’s unlikely that the practice was any different in 1940 when the Arrow ad was published.