Airplane Piano Bar
There are some absolute gems in the Boeing archives and – though I have always loved flying – I would trade any of my in-air memories for a shot at experiencing a 747 flight in the 1970s.

While the 1930s Boeing Clipper had everything from a powder room to a dining room (pictured in black and white, below), things got phenomenally jazzy in the Seventies. In the vintage American Airlines 747 Coach Lounge Commercial below, NBC’s Chet Huntley pimps out the airline’s Wurlitzer piano bar while The Fonz offers a fellow traveller a light…

It’s all very smooth…and very Don Draper.

For First Class, the Boeing 747’s small upper deck was turned into a cocktail bar in the sky; all Martinis, steaks, and ultra-modern swivel chairs. On Continental Airlines, there was even a pub.

Please take a moment to listen to Waltz of The Flowers while you receive a tour of the Boeing 747 100 Series’ First Class deck…


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life in 1950
This may be one of my favourite Throwback Thursday finds in quite some time. Found in the August 1925 issue of ‘Popular Science Monthly‘, the article above – May Live to See – suggests that city dwellers would be living on four levels after 25 years had passed. Subtitled under ‘How You May Live and Travel in the City of 1950’, I certainly don’t disagree with the idea of a pedestrian-only level of land or a city full of spiral escalators.

Serious talk, guys. It’s coming up to 100 years later. Where my spirals at?

vintage film makeup
Though actresses have to worry about the incredibly high quality of HD film picking up their every imperfection these days, the ladies of film had an entirely different problem in the 1920s. Because of the price, Orthochromatic film stock was the standard during the birth of film but was rather insensitive to red and yellow light on the spectrum. The processes used to correct this insensitivity to red and yellow in post-production would make it oversensitive to blue and violet. Make-up wise, this means that actors and actresses had to be made up with highly exaggerated and contradictory colors in order to look natural on film. Hence the hooker face.

young martha stewart
Everyone’s go-to domestic goddess was quite the looker, wasn’t she? Martha Stewart – pictured here in a range of ads, including a Chanel ad (third picture) – first stepped into the limelight as a model in the 1960s to support herself while she attended college. In the PBS documentary Makers, Stewart revealed that she “[…] got enough modeling jobs at $50/hour — which was a lot of money at that time.”

Heads up, Karle Kloss: this model-turned-mogul is now worth over $638 million.

young martha stewart
young martha stewart
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twiggy
In my eyes, Twiggy was the original supermodel. Though she has obviously also earned fame as an actress and singer, Twiggy’s special long-lashed androgyny was one of the most iconic aesthetics of the Sixties. Few ‘supers’ achieve that sort of recognition. The difference between these rare vintage shots from California and modern-day Twiggy in a rather adorable video promoting her M&S collection (below) is mesmerizing.


twiggy