Summary

45 rpm disc recording produced by Melbourne men's clothing manufacturer Gloweave as a Christmas gift to staff at their retail outlets in the early 1960s. It contains a Christmas message from Graham Kennedy, as well as a Christmas story recited by Digby Wolfe, as well as a piece of music entitled `Love Him', by the Bruce Clarke Orchestra.

The Melbourne-based company was established in 1944 under the name Comfort Shirt and Underclothing Manufacturing Company and originally made military shirts and undergarmets. In 1950 Saul Same changed the organisation's focus by designing shirts that were more stylish and fashionable and the business soon became a well-respected menswear retailer. Four years later the company changed its name to Gloweave, the nylon fabric name of its most popular and best selling shirt. Gloweave is still in operation today and has expanded its range to include a wide variety of men's and women's clothing.

Physical Description

Circular black vinyl 45 rpm record, with central hole and with white paper label. Contained in a plain white sleeve. Cover is red and black paper.

Significance

This record is a rare surviving example of a promotional recording created for an iconic Melbourne manufacturing company. It was produced by Gloweave to recognise the role of its staff in the ongoing success of the company, and would have been made at one of the local record pressing plants (such as W&G and Astor) which existed in Melbourne at the time. Gloweave prided itself on the postive relationship it had with its staff and there were many employees who stayed with the company for several decades. Before the company's new plant was built in Fitzroy in the late 1950s, they financed a study by LaTrobe University of its workers to see if there was a link between workplace stress and the new style of automated production being introduced. Staff were told that `to be a Gloweave person is something special'. This is therefore an important addition to the Gloweave collection, documenting an element of its `working life'.

To give the production a real sense of occasion, television personalities Graham Kennedy and Digby Wolfe were used. Kennedy, in particular, was the unofficial face of Gloweave, through its ongoing promotion on the top rating television variety program IMT (In Melbourne Tonight.) Gloweave had an exclusive contract with GTV Channel 9 to promote its products (furore errupted when Pelaco was mentioned during an early IMT segment - after that, the name was never uttered again) and watched sales figures soar through this exposure. Gloweve even dedicated the FAME range of shirts to Kennedy, commemorating this with a Kennedy plaster bust as a gift to retailers.

The reverse side of the record has a musical piece entitled `Love Him', played by Melbourne's Bruce Clarke Orchestra, which was written for Gloweave as part of its famous `Love me in my Gloweave' campaign. Local advertising company Nichols Cummings came up with this catchphrase for Gloweave in 1957. Management were initially reluctant to adopt it as they thought it sounded `too effeminate', but relented and went on to see it become the identifying slogan for all Gloweave products, and even become part of the Australian lexicon.

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