braniff international :: mary wells lawrence :: sixties advertising superstar

braniff in a wash of beautiful color. i tore up a hundred magazines collecting pictures of automobiles in color, colorful interiors, colorful clothes. jack + stew began exploring ways to make the planes colorful. jo hughes, the fashion expert at bergdorf goodman, set up a meeting for me with emilio pucci, who stood for color in women’s clothes more than anyone else in the world. he + i met, he understood me before i opened my mouth. emilio was phenomenally prescient + i got a clue to his energy at that meeting. he seemed to me to be on the ceiling most of the time, although i knew that was not possible; still, in the months to come he often seemed to me to be on the ceiling. but then we were doing everything possible to turn braniff upside down. we searched for alexander girard, the designer of la fonda del sol, a restaurant in the time-life building where my mother + i used to take my daughters. it was a high-octane color montage of mexican + modern, he worked with herman miller designers + was a colleague of ray + charles eames + eero saarinen, the people who had created my wedding furniture. he lived in new mexico + stew + i flew out to see him in his vivid new mexican house with its art gallery, a riot of folk art. we saw a thousand ideas for braniff’s terminals, check-in counters + clubs in his house + he had a thousand more when we signed him on as the project designer. i thought it was a good omen when he said he had been brought up in florence + knew emilio; it all came together as if preordained.” (click images to enlarge)
(pics via braniffinternational)

here are 2 groovy braniff commercials ::

braniff international — #1 :: jet introduction with band playing on wing

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braniff international — #2 :: the “air strip”

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Posted by modmom

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