This is one of a series of advertising posters designed by celebrated fashion illustrator René Gruau for Noveltex in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Noveltex’s campaigns had long been renowned for their artistic quality; the artist Severo Pozzatti (Sepo) produced numerous remarkable posters for the firm between 1925 and 1951. By the time Gruau began designing for it, this French men’s shirt-and-collar company was offering no-iron shirts in cotton and the new nylon for the modern man. Gruau had started his career as a fashion illustrator for magazines from 1935, among them Femina and Marie Claire. But he is perhaps best known for his work as the director of advertising for Christian Dior from 1947, a role which led to numerous other commissions from major fashion houses and publications, as well as posters for theater, film, and cabaret. This design reflects the persistence of Gruau’s minimalist style, often featuring only black, red, and white, in which he describes his subject in few fluid lines but nonetheless captures some sense of an individual character. As he stated: “When I do a drawing, I need a live model that I can have move around as much as I need to. I can’t work from a photo. I need to feel the presence of a person. If there’s no human raw material, the drawing has less personality.”