Roger Moore, "teen-age youth"

For the KCG Convention in Derby, I compiled a quiz based on knitting and crochet patterns: I had collected patterns with famous models, and the task was to name the celebrity.  Most of them were actors or well-known in some other field, rather than professional models, but I included a few models such as Twiggy.  Although it turned out that no-one but me recognised Marisa Berenson and Pattie Boyd.    

While collecting celebrity patterns, I found another two early photos of Roger Moore as a knitwear model.  (I "found" them after a search led me to this piece from the Hello! magazine web site.)  These are from Practical Home Knitting, published by Odhams Press in 1949, and  pre-date by a few years the ones I have shown previously (here and here).  

 

The teen-age youth will appreciate this polo-neck sweater for week-end wear.  The polo collar is knitted on four needles to ensure a well-fitting neckline in spite of youth's inevitable rough handling when dressing!

The first item he is modelling is a "useful polo-neck sweater".   The caption refers to him as a teen-age youth, although he was actually 21 or 22 at the time.  In the other illustration, he is wearing a  Fair Isle scarf and gloves, "for spectator sports wear".  

No matter how conservative they may become later, young men under twenty usually favour scarves and gloves of bold design. 

I think that in the polo neck sweater, he does look like a James Bond in the making.  Maybe not in the  Fair Isle scarf and gloves. 

The Man with the Golden Pullover

Sirdar leaflet 1402

Did someone think that Roger Moore looked especially good in yellow, or was it just a fashionable colour for men in 1952?   I showed the yellow cardigan that he modelled for Stitchcraft here, and here he is on a Sirdar pattern too.  

I have seen this pattern before at Lee Mills, in fact, but it was a very creased and torn copy, mended with sticky tape that had gone brittle and yellow - it had not been treated with the respect and care it deserves.  So I was very pleased to see several copies in good condition when I started work on the boxes of unsorted/partly-sorted boxes of Sirdar leaflets last week. 

The pullover pattern is interesting in its own right.  The cables and the diamond pattern on the panels between the cables are based on a fisherman's jersey from Flamborough on the Yorkshire coast.  There is a photo of the original jersey on the back of the pattern.  Adapting vintage patterns has become a big thing, so it's good to see that 60 years ago the Sirdar designers were taking inspiration from traditional patterns. 

The Man with the Golden Cardigan

As it's the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, there is a lot of discussion of 1952 in the media, so why don't I join in?  One thing that was happening in 1952 in knitting only became noteworthy later  -  Roger Moore was at the peak of his career as a model for knitting patterns, before switching to acting.  The move worked out very well for him, of course, even if it was a loss to knitting.  The Stitchcraft Men's Book appeared in that year, I believe, and he featured in most of the 1952 issues of Stitchcraft, including two front covers.

He looks very young (he was about 25) and really pretty good - male models of later decades often look ridiculous now (bad hair, dreadful moustaches and/or too much fake tan).

What looks most dated is that he is often posed with a cigarette or a pipe.  It seems quite shocking now to see a model smoking.  And I associate pipe-smoking with much older men, though perhaps it wasn't like that in 1952.