Selling Family

I was ichatting with a few of my brothers tonight and thought of a vintage Kate Spade advertisement. Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been able to show you this image because it didn’t seem to exist on the web. But now that Partners & Spade‘s website has launched in elegant orange & gray glory, I can smoothly reference it.

Andy Spade suggests in this article that their initial advertising campaigns sold product using family-lust as opposed to wealth-lust (these are cruder words than he used for the young ears of New York Magazine, I’m giving it to you straight). The photo I thought of, this one, is from a five-page narrative about a family visiting the older sister in New York City. Back when I ripped it out of a magazine and glued it into my scrapbook, I thought I liked just liked the snappy clothes. But Andy’s probably right, I liked it because it told the story of a family happy to see each other, being tired at the museum, collapsing at the hotel for a drink (see more of the photos here, though tragically the whole campaign isn’t online). Are ichat screenshots the Midwestern-family-sprawls-west-and-east equivalent of Kate Spade’s campaign? Not yet.