Jane Trahey; Created Blackglama Fur Ads

Jane Trahey, 76, one of the most prominent women in advertising in the 1960s, best known for the “What Becomes a Legend Most” ads for Blackglama furs, one of Madison Avenue’s longest-running campaigns. Trahey’s first job in advertising was at the Carson Pirie Scott department store in Chicago, where she spent two years “writing creatively about underwear.” Then she became assistant advertising manager and copy chief for Neiman Marcus in Dallas, a job she landed despite having criticized Stanley Marcus’ tie during her interview. After rising to become Neiman Marcus’ sales promotion director, she left to found her own agency, Trahey Advertising, in 1960 (later renamed Trahey/Wolf). In the late 1960s, she and colleague Peter Rogers developed a campaign for the Great Lakes Mink Assn., which wanted a catchy slogan to sell its extra-dark minks. She took the acronym for the group, GLMA, and turned it into Blackglama. Then she embarked on an unusual personal endorsement strategy that would depict celebrities wearing the furs but never mention their names in the ads. Through personal contacts, she convinced stars such as Bette Davis, Carol Channing, Barbra Streisand and Lauren Bacall to appear. In return, a star would receive a Richard Avedon portrait and a fur coat of her choice. “If she wasn’t famous enough to be recognized instantly without a label, I didn’t want her in the campaign,” Trahey wrote in her semi-autobiographical 1977 book, “Jane Trahey on Women and Power.” The campaign ran for three decades, inspiring imitators, such as an unidentified, T-shirted Tina Turner in Gap ads. Trahey also wrote a play, “Ring Round the Bathtub,” which was produced on Broadway in 1972; and a novel, “Life With Mother Superior,” that was made into a film starring Rosalind Russell and Hayley Mills. On April 22 of cancer at her home in Kent, Conn.