How a South Carolina textile tycoon used sex to sell sheets

Elliott White Springs, the South Carolina textile tycoon, was a provocateur who understood the power of an image. The images he produced to advertise his products, particularly the bedsheets created at the mills he owned, were sexually suggestive for their time.

The ad campaigns worked.

“His strategy was always to lure the viewer in with the image,” said Steve Folks, who wrote and directed “Miss Springmaid,” the Carolina Stories documentary on Springs produced by ETV.

The film debuted in 2010. On Friday, the Columbia Design League will host “Sex Sells: The Springmaid Story” at the Columbia Museum of Art. Following a screening of the documentary, a panel will discuss issues within the film.

The reaction won’t be as volatile as it was in the late ’40s and early ’50s when the ads began appearing in popular magazines.

“Half of the people thought it was outrageously bad,” Folks said. “Half of the people thought it was outrageously good.”

Folks expected more complaints after the documentary, which has drawings of women with their underwear showing, first aired.

“Times have changed a bit,” he said. “What was shocking then is not as shocking today.”

Springs, a South Carolina native, was a decorated Army colonel and a WWI pilot credited with shooting down 16 planes. After the war, the Princeton-educated Springs worked as a writer in New York before returning to upstate South Carolina to reluctantly take over the six mills his father owned.

To boost sales of sheets and other items, Springs began making the alluring ads. What remains remarkable about the campaigns is the ad copy that accompanied the images. The copy wasn’t a catchphrase; it was a narrative, pun-filled short stories in many cases. Often times the stories and headlines were riddled with double-entendres.

Ultimately, Springs just wanted to sell products.

“I think it made more sense to people back then than it does now,” Folks said. “When I first saw the ads, I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. It took a lot of studying. People back then understood more. It was really sophisticated.”

The advertising world of the ’50s and ’60s belonged to the so-called Mad Men, as depicted in the AMC series with the same name. Springs didn’t need their help to sell his products nationwide.

“Back then, as it is now, you didn’t run an ad campaign like this without having an agency in New York,” Folks said. “The Madison Avenue people pretty much had a monopoly on what was put in magazines. They hated him. They didn’t want him to belong to the New York establishment.

“He was the antithesis of the Mad Men.”

Starting in 1946, Springs began hosting a “Miss Springmaid” contest, with the winner getting a week-long trip to New York. A few of the former Miss Springmaids might be in attendance Friday night.

The Columbia Design League, the organization that produces Runaway Runway, continues to broaden its programming beyond structural design.

“The mission is to promote the importance of good design in every aspect of our lives,” Anna Redwine, the CDL president said. “So it’s certainly architecture, but it’s also typesetting, and it’s also product design, advertising. We’re really trying to investigate every tenet of design.”

Design can be anything.

“It think that’s been the undercurrent of what we as the design league (are) trying to showcase,” said Elizabeth Nkuo Johnson, the CDL vice president. “I still think you need that eye of discernment.”

“Sex Sells: The Springmaid Story” is also a slice of state history, a glimpse into the textile mills, a once dominant industry.

“Sometimes the stories are about South Carolina, but this is sort of a national thing,” Folks said about the Carolina Stories series. “So often we find that South Carolinians have done things in history and they’re just brushed over.”