Thank You, Farrah

June 26, 2009

The passing of Farrah Fawcett on June 25 saddened millions, and resonated with me, in particular, as Impressions had its own connection to the celebrity icon. In May 1977, the first cover of Impressions magazine featured an image of the superstar that was one of the hottest licensed stock transfer designs of its time. In that same debut issue, we premiered the “Impression of the Month” full-page coverage of a particular T-shirt design and it happened to be the famous poster image of the superstar in the red bathing suit.

I know that Farrah had no idea of the indelible mark that her image made on what was then a decorated apparel industry in its infancy. But at the time, the Farrah fanfare was a huge boost for the manufacturer that was selling the licensed heat transfers at a rate never before seen.

The story of how that poster came to be one of the most popular T-shirt designs of all time starts with a company called Pro-Arts, which in 1975 secured the rights to produce heat transfers of the famous image for use on T-shirts. According to our coverage at the time, Farrah signed the contract for a royalty payment of 10% of both the poster and transfer price.

Pioneer transfer manufacturer Factors, Etc. was awarded the job of creating and marketing the transfers, with a winning bid of $50,000 upon signing and $150,000 in guaranteed sales. At the time, no one paid more than $10,000 upfront on a transfer license, but the gamble paid off. Within 90 days of signing, Factors paid Pro Arts $300,000 in royalties based on the sale of 3.3 million Farrah Fawcett transfers. The company couldn’t make them fast enough, and ran production 24/7.

Top customers included stores such as Woolco, JCPenney, Kmart and Sears, who sold the designs as “preprints.” And Shirt Shed, the leading retail T-shirt chain at the time, pre-bought 500,000 Farrah transfers from Factors. In our coverage in the May 1977 issue, Impressions predicted “that Farrah will be printed on close to 8 million shirts before it’s all over.”

Hearing of her passing yesterday gave me pause to walk down memory lane with my Impressions archives and brought smiles on a day of sadness. The T-shirt impacts everyone’s life as a message medium and a canvas for expression. Every now and then a design comes along that lives on for decades, and this red bathing suit image is one of those.

Thank you Pro-Arts, Factors and Farrah for giving us that first cover image more than 30 years ago.

— Marcia Derryberry, Impressions Editor in Chief

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