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National Film and Sound Archive of AustraliaNational Film and Sound Archive
National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
National Film and Sound Archive
National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
National Film and Sound Archive

Pelaco shirts TV advertisement

1981

Pelaco shirts TV advertisement

1981

  • NFSA ID8WRC9WBT
  • TypeTelevision
  • MediumMoving Image
  • FormSeries
  • GenresNews
  • Year1981

'All the boys are putting on Pelaco...' This ad for Melbourne-based clothing manufacturer Pelaco features a male model trying on a range of business shirts in muted tones, including a shade of brown and a short-sleeved safari number that suggests 1970s fashions were lingering in the new decade (this ad aired in 1981). This ad survives as a snapshot of a softer look for men's business fashions than is usually associated with the pinstripes of the greed-is-good mid-late '80s. The commercial lacks the overt ogling and casual misogyny of other ads of the era, but having a blonde woman singing about dogs and then howling is an odd choice for selling men's shirts. Still, it adds some welcome colour and energy, and nicely offsets the male model fumbling with his chunky cassette-player dictaphone and tangling up his telephone cords. Pelaco was established in the 1910s, and the company name came from the surnames of its founders: James Kerr Pearson and James Lindsay Gordon Law.

'All the boys are putting on Pelaco...' This ad for Melbourne-based clothing manufacturer Pelaco features a male model trying on a range of business shirts in muted tones, including a shade of brown and a short-sleeved safari number that suggests 1970s fashions were lingering in the new decade (this ad aired in 1981). This ad survives as a snapshot of a softer look for men's business fashions than is usually associated with the pinstripes of the greed-is-good mid-late '80s. The commercial lacks the overt ogling and casual misogyny of other ads of the era, but having a blonde woman singing about dogs and then howling is an odd choice for selling men's shirts. Still, it adds some welcome colour and energy, and nicely offsets the male model fumbling with his chunky cassette-player dictaphone and tangling up his telephone cords. Pelaco was established in the 1910s, and the company name came from the surnames of its founders: James Kerr Pearson and James Lindsay Gordon Law.

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