Mid-century Magazine Ads from the Spring Cotton Mills

Recently while handling family papers collected by my grandmother in North Carolina, I came across a packet of color magazine ads from Springs Cotton Mills. Looking back, she used this material as inspiration for a party costume many years ago. But now I see its potential significance in the history of advertising and the movement toward social justice. The set of four advertisements is now cataloged as The Elliott Springs Touch at Hagley.

Colonel Elliott White Springs appears in our online catalog as the author of War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator and Clothes Make the Man. Born in 1896 and educated at Princeton, Springs distinguished himself as a World War I flying ace and afterward as a popular fiction writer. At the age of thirty-five, he inherited the family textile mills in South Carolina. Fascinated with the machinery, he expanded production from cotton cloth to finished goods. The success of the company soared through the 1940’s and 1950’s owing to a print advertising campaign he developed himself.

Springs hired pin-up artists to portray his new vision of a “Springmaid girl” to promote sheets and underwear. He tagged the sexually suggestive images with textual double-entendres. The public reaction is documented in Clothes Make the Man. Some people wrote disapprovingly to him and to editors of host magazines, but Springs estimated that “about 98 percent of the letters are favorable” (Springs 1948, 152). Before long, the advertising industry followed his lead and we have lived ever since in a culture where sex sells.

This collection contains two sexualized images of the Springmaid girl and two caricatures of indigenous Americans depicted as romanticized couples. In a letter to his ad man in 1947, Springs suggests that “some people will take a second look and catch the burlesque, and be very proud that they’re so smart” (Springs 1948, 91). We invite you to review these mid-century models of sexism and racism in advertising and consider the cost of humor at the expense of human dignity.

Resources

Robinson, Jennifer. “Miss Springmaid.” KPBS. Monday, June 15, 2020, accessed October 13, 2020. https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/jun/15/miss-springmaid/

SouthCarolinaETV, “Elliott White Springs,” YouTube video, 6:59, July 2, 2012, accessed October 13, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvVx_OSVFxo.

Springs, Elliott White. Clothes Make the Man. New York: n.p. (Little & Ives), 1948.