Caviar, Cordials, and Eye Patches

The year was 1951. Ellerton Jette, the president of a small shirt manufacturer in Maine, needed an ad campaign.

The problem? He only had $30,000.

He had heard of David Ogilvy, the up-and-coming advertising man. So he approached him knowing that his budget was smaller than Ogilvy was accustomed to.

However, he believed that Ogilvy had what it would take to make the small company into an international success. So he promised Ogilvy two things:

“No matter how big my company gets, I will never fire you. And I will never change a word of your copy.”

Creative freedom and a perpetual contract — a dream client.

Thanks to that client and with the help of Baron George Wrangell, David Ogilvy cemented his fame in the advertising industry.

Wrangell served as the model who famously wore an eye patch in the ads for Hathaway shirts.

The patch was meant to arouse curiosity about this distinctive and aristocratic man, who must have led an intriguing and unusual life.

The first Hathaway Shirt ad ran in the New Yorker in 1951 and the following year, the Advertising Federation of America named Ogilvy, then 41, as its “Young Advertising Man of the Year.”

The famous Hathaway shirt ad

It was a genius of a campaign, with a huge sales success, because it was based on the astute premise that the male public disliked the aristocracy, but really always wanted to be one of them.

While Baron Wrangell didn’t need an eye patch himself, Ogilvy got the idea from seeing pictures of ex-Ambassador Lewis Douglas, who wore a patch after losing the sight of one eye in a fly-fishing accident in 1949. 

In Wrangell’s obituary in 1969, Jette, then the retired chairman of C.F. Hathaway Corporation, said that the images transformed them from “a fine small company to an internationally known one.”

And he kept his word to Mr. Ogilvy and the relationship lasted over 20 years.

Wrangell’s own history held a bit of intrigue: he was the nephew of the commander of the Russian White Army and the son of the former Russian Imperial Consul General in Rome.

At the invitation of the Hearst Organization, he joined The New York Journal-American to write the “Caviar and Cordials” column. 

I like the ring of that. It would make a nice alternative title for Classy AF.

Oh, and if that intrigues you, you might be interested in the recipe book Caviar to Cordial by Eleanor and Vincent Dwyer (Sign of the Mermaid, Detroit, 1935).

You don’t need an eye patch to be Classy AF.

But it doesn’t hurt.