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Is a Tintin costume viable for a 50s themed event?

Blistring_Barnacles
Member
#1 · Posted: 31 Jan 2012 18:20
I want to know if a Tintin costume is viable for a 50's themed event.
mct16
Member
#2 · Posted: 1 Feb 2012 00:49
If you wore his trademark plus-fours and raincoat then that might be enough to conveys a 1950s feel.
Balthazar
Moderator
#3 · Posted: 1 Feb 2012 12:28
Tintin is certainly a feature of the fifties, but I don't think he's regarded as specifically a 50s icon. Much of his clothing style dates from his earlier decades. He had plus four trousers from the start of his adventures in 1929 and, to me, they seem more iconic of the 1920s and 1930s. Tintin carries off the plus fours look pretty well throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s, but I think most people wearing plus fours would have looked increasingly old fashioned throughout those decades.

Tintin starts wearing his beige raincoat in the 1930s, and the iconic blue jumper (worn with the white shirt collar showing at the neck) first appears in the early 1940s, I think, replacing the various yellow shirt, occasional red tie, cream/white shirt and occasional blue tie, and brown jacket combinations he wears throughout the 1930s. I think his "classic" 1940s-onwards get-up is completed in Red Rackham's treasure, when the black socks are swapped for white (with his white socks then being retrospectively applied to some of the redrawn and/or newly cloured versions of th 1930s adventures).

This classic 1940s costume of white socks, brown plus-fours, blue jumper over white shirt and beige raincoat is certainly what Tintin continues to wears during many of the 1950s adventures (and on into the 1960s), so if you particularly want to dress up as Tintin for this event, go for it! Nobody could say it wasn't authentically 1950s.

But if you were wanting something specifically or iconically associated with the 1950s, I don't think Tintin's costume quite does that, since most people would probably associate his style with the 30s or 40s, especially with the recent movie seeming to have a late 30s/early 40s setting. But, as I said, don't let that stop you. Themed fancy dress parties are hard enough work anyway, without feeling obliged to be overly specific!
Blistring_Barnacles
Member
#4 · Posted: 6 Feb 2012 16:54
Thanks for the help! I decided to do something else because a) I couldn't pull it off (brown bobs are hard to make into blond quiffs) and b) no one would know who I was. This is for school and I only know of one other Tintin fan here!

This topic is closed.