'70s Star Shelley Hack Was The Face Of The Decade's Most Iconic Fragrance
Model Shelley Hack made her mark on 1970s pop culture through the iconic TV series "Charlie's Angels," where she portrayed Tiffany Welles. Before this, it was a Revlon campaign that put her on the map. Specifically, one focused on a product with a similar name to the TV series: Hack was the face of Revlon's popular fragrance "Charlie" from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s. In the advertisements, Hack starred as a confident, beautiful, and self-assured woman named Charlie, helping to market the perfume to modern women. In fact, one of the fragrance's most popular commercials sees Hack striding out of a Rolls Royce in a satin jumpsuit — after a few spritzes of "Charlie," naturally.
Coming before the other classic perfumes from the '70s and '80s that are still popular today, "Charlie" changed the women's fragrance landscape forever. Revlon's trailblazing marketing campaign centered women at its core, rather than advertising the fragrance as a gift for men to buy their partners. Hack became the prototypical "Charlie girl," an independent, stylish woman who paved her own way. The fragrance quickly became iconic and expanded to introduce variations on the original "Charlie" (now called "Charlie Blue"), including Red, Gold, and White, among many others. Still, the original commercials and magazine advertisements starring Hack are what most think of first when it comes to Revlon's fragrance line.
Shelley Hack has discussed how important the Charlie fragrance was to the women's movement
Today, a perfume advertising campaign like the ones Revlon ran for "Charlie" in the mid-1970s and '80s wouldn't be considered revolutionary. However, at the time, these ads were groundbreaking. Model and actor Shelley Hack gave a firsthand account of how the "Charlie girl" archetype she embodied served the feminist movement. "Back then, many women still didn't like going to public places by themselves, but the Charlie girl jumped out of a car and walked confidently into a restaurant. She seemed bold," Hack told Allure in 2010 (via CharliesAngels).
Like many women growing up in the 1970s, Hack has stories about how women entering the workplace for the first time were treated — and, of course, all the hard work they did to dismantle the systems that kept them down. She recalled to the outlet how her sister, who had an MBA, was relegated to making coffee for her fellow staff members at a bank. "The women's movement — it was really women in offices, one by one, handling that problem. And the Charlie girl was handling the change in women's roles in a really positive way," Hack said.
According to Hack, part of the Revlon marketing team's reason for choosing her as the face of "Charlie" was her relatability. "Women would want to be my friend, and guys wouldn't be too intimidated to ask me out on a date," Hack said. Though the model prefaced this statement by claiming that she "wasn't so beautiful," her stunning appearance and charming confidence enraptured a generation of women. With this in mind, if you're looking for your next signature fragrance, it may be worth it to channel Hack's empowering energy and give the timeless "Charlie" a try. But you need to hurry. This beauty company may not be around much longer, so "Charlie" could become a vintage item in the near future.