‘I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night’

Take a Trip Through the Fictitious Tale Behind the Creation of my American Airlines-inspired Cocktail Cabinet

Pictures are great. What’s not to love about a clear, well lit product shot, professionally staged to enable prospective buyers to really imagine a piece of furniture in their own home? Yet pictures sometimes only tell half the story. Sometimes it’s helpful to take a deeper dive into the provenance of a design, to offer a more detailed insight into the nucleus of an idea that precedes the finished article.

Take my American Airlines-inspired cocktail cabinet for example. To me, the ’naked’ cabinet is straight out of an episode of Mad Men, the acclaimed AMC network drama about one of New York's most prestigious ad agencies at the beginning of the 1960s, focusing on the firm's mysterious yet talented creative director, Donald Draper. 

So to try and offer some kind of idea into the vibe I was aiming for with this piece, I thought it helpful to share this little story that I dreamt up. This is, obviously, purely fictitious, but hopefully it serves as insight into the kind of quasi-subliminal thought process that bubbles around in my brain when developing design ideas.

“One cold, January night in 1962, Don Draper bumps into renowned aviator and philanthropist, Howard Hughes, at a Cannonball Adderley concert at the Vanguard in New York’s Greenwich Village.

Don Draper, creative director of Sterling Cooper in the AMC production of Mad Men’. Creator: Frank Ockenfels | Credit: AMC

Hughes tells Draper of a flight he took from JFK to Dallas Fort Worth remarking on the half-a-dozen Old Fashioned cocktails he sampled in the American Airlines' executive lounge before boarding his flight. He explains that the ‘bitters’ that make up the cocktail had purportedly been imported from Cape Verde, and when mixed with a small batch bourbon from a mash mill in Bardstown, Kentucky, combined to create the most sophisticated of indulgences. As luck would have it, Draper - who shares Hughes’ Old Fashioned compulsion - is due to fly out of JFK the following day to attend an international airline convention in Chicago where he hopes to land a couple of advertising gigs within the booming industry of air travel.

The next day, he makes a point of arriving at the airport a couple of hours early and heads straight for the AA lounge. He pulls up a velvet stool at the bar, lights a cigarette, and wryly smiles at a stream of excitable air hostesses floating along the vestibule toward their boarding gate. He asks the tender to line him up an Old Fashioned. Hughes was right. This was an Old Fashioned of godly proportions. A balanced nectar of sour West African bitters and smokey southern bourbon. Draper notes a huddle of suited execs at a nearby table, all briefcases, cologne, and cigars. Their name-badges denote they are AA marketing bigwigs bound for the convention in Chicago too. Draper collects his nectar and introduces himself…

Several hours and cocktails later, and having missed their flights, Draper and the execs - shirt collars unbuttoned and brows glistening with beads of bourbon sweat - raucously backslap each other as they pile out of the lounge amidst a cloud of tobacco smoke and testosterone.

Heading to the terminal exit, one exec calls after Draper, “Give our love to Betty, Don! She sounds like a great gal!”, before parting ways. Draper hails a yellow cab and heads back to his Sterling Cooper agency offices on Sixth Avenue, having just secured a lucrative five-year advertising deal to re-brand American Airlines - worth millions of dollars.

A few weeks later, a sizeable timber crate arrives at the offices of Sterling Cooper, addressed to Don Draper. Inside is a bespoke, hand-finished cocktail bar, lined with finest walnut and a gold leaf gilded American Airlines eagle, accompanied by a note that reads, “Don - a gift to say ‘thanks’ for helping American Airlines feel a little less 'old fashioned', and a little more cutting edge. From all at AA.”