"Steel ... gloved in style"

Believe it or not, this dress was intended to advertise office furniture. (Click on the image to see the entire original picture, which also includes western-themed draperies and a bemused-looking cow skull.) I feel the same way about this ad as I do about a recent series of ads in the fashmags that are intended to advertise faucets. "Great dress!" I think. "Where can I buy it?" And then I realize that no, it's not an ad for a dress, it's an ad for something else (faucets, steel office furniture, the Letter-Matic 1960) that I have absolutely no interest in. Then my inner thwarted moppet imagines jumping up and down on the ad. (Yes, I have a rich fantasy life. Why do you ask?)

Back to the dress. I love everything about it. The lemon meringue color. The halter. The bow. The midriff. The skirt. The haircut. The "I'm thinking exalted yet business-y thoughts" pose. Even the shoes are perfect! How I hope that the model was the glamorous wife of the company president, and that he demanded she be in all the photos, until she ran off with Fred from accounting. Or, better yet, maybe she was the glamorous designer of the "steel ... gloved in style" desks, and responsible for the cow skull and the palm trees, and eventually came up with an aqua-and-pink ladies' version, complete with built-in pop-up vanity mirror, for "the stylish female executive."

Of course, she's probably a local catalog model, and spent the shoot complaining about the air-conditioning and snapping her gum between shots. Sigh.

Do click on the image to go explore the Plan59 site. Isn't this one great? And this one would ALMOST make me drink Pepsi. (If I were a slightly-peeved orchid enthusiast, of course.) And best of all, this one. Oh, where oh where are the flying cars? We were PROMISED them, dammit.