Straight as an Arrow?

Long before ripped models in their underwear stood five stories tall in Times Square, there was the Arrow Collar Man. This chiseled sophisticate who women wanted to bed and men wanted to be was the brainchild of artist J.C. Leyendecker. He single-handedly launched the use of sex symbols and “branding” in modern ad campaigns and his groundbreaking illustrations have been compiled for the book J.C. Leyendecker (out now), in which authors Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler also spill the juicy details of his life.

The delicious back story is that the Arrow Collar Man was modeled after Leyendecker’s life partner, Charles Beach. Leyendecker hid the love affair from his father, and the relationship drove a wedge between him and his siblings. But he and Beach lived the high life in the Roaring Twenties, throwing parties for the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker.

And though Leyendecker wasn’t out to the American public, his popular images were filled with homoerotic undertones and phallic symbols, with handsome men subtly stroking their golf clubs and provocatively puffing on pipes. How ironic that the society that wouldn’t tolerate his lifestyle subconsciously ate up the subversive messages in his work — and made him a fortune in the process.


J.C. Leyendecker is available now from Harry N. Abrams.