As soon as the ad appeared in The New Yorker last fall, all eyes were green in Manhattan's ad alley. "The Man in the Hathaway Shirt" depicted a white-shirted, debonair-looking fellow who was given a peculiar air of distinction by a black patch over his right eye. The ad was the inspiration of British-born David Ogilvy, 41, vice president of Manhattan's Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather, Inc. He got the idea from pictures of ex-Ambassador Lewis Douglas, who has worn a patch ever since he lost the sight of one eye in a fishing accident. (The man in the ad is Baron George Wrangell, émigré nephew of a White Russian general, whose eyes are perfectly good).
Last week the Advertising Federation of America named Ogilvy its "Young Advertising Man of the Year." This week Ogilvy received a more sincere form of flattery. Manhattan's James McCreery & Co. department store, advertising its "Silf-Skin girdle," depicted a buoyant, smiling young model clad in nothing but a girdle, a halter and an eyepatch.