Jet set
Encyclopedia
"Jet set" is a journalistic term that was used to describe an international social group of wealth
Wealth
Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem...

y people, organizing and participating all around the world in social activities that are unreachable to ordinary people. The term, which replaced "café society
Café Society
Café society was the collective description for the so-called "Beautiful People" and "Bright Young Things" who gathered in fashionable cafes and restaurants in New York, Paris, and London beginning in the late 19th century...

", came from the lifestyle of traveling from one stylish or exotic place to another via jet aircraft
Jet aircraft
A jet aircraft is an aircraft propelled by jet engines. Jet aircraft generally fly much faster than propeller-powered aircraft and at higher altitudes – as high as . At these altitudes, jet engines achieve maximum efficiency over long distances. The engines in propeller-powered aircraft...

.

The term "jet set" is attributed to Igor Cassini
Igor Cassini
Igor Cassini was an American syndicated gossip columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain. He was the second journalist to write the Cholly Knickerbocker column.-Career:...

, a reporter for the New York Journal-American who wrote under the pen name "Cholly Knickerbocker".

Although jet passenger service in the 1950s was initially marketed primarily to the rich, its introduction eventually resulted in a substantial democratization of air travel. Today the term "jet set" no longer has cachet. It may still be valid today if it is understood to mean those who have the independent wealth and time to regularly travel widely, at will, for extended periods, for pleasure. It could also now be taken to mean those who can afford to travel in privately-owned or leased aircraft.

Jet travel

BOAC
Boac
Boac may refer to:* Boac, Marinduque, a municipality in the Southern Philippines* Boac , an American rapper* British Overseas Airways Corporation, a former British state-owned airline...

 inaugurated the world's first commercial scheduled jet service on 2 May 1952, using the de Havilland Comet, followed by the introduction of the Comet 4 in 1958 after a series of accidents in 1953-1954. The first successful service, from October 1958, was the typical "jet set" route, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. Pan Am
Pan American World Airways
Pan American World Airways, commonly known as Pan Am, was the principal and largest international air carrier in the United States from 1927 until its collapse on December 4, 1991...

 quickly followed suit with the Boeing 707
Boeing 707
The Boeing 707 is a four-engine narrow-body commercial passenger jet airliner developed by Boeing in the early 1950s. Its name is most commonly pronounced as "Seven Oh Seven". The first airline to operate the 707 was Pan American World Airways, inaugurating the type's first commercial flight on...

.

Other cities on the standard "jet set" routes were Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

. "Jet set" resorts, invariably with white sand and salt water, were circumscribed by modern standards; Acapulco
Acapulco
Acapulco is a city, municipality and major sea port in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast of Mexico, southwest from Mexico City. Acapulco is located on a deep, semi-circular bay and has been a port since the early colonial period of Mexico’s history...

, Nassau
Nassau, Bahamas
Nassau is the capital, largest city, and commercial centre of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. The city has a population of 248,948 , 70 percent of the entire population of The Bahamas...

, and Huntington Hartford
Huntington Hartford
George Huntington Hartford II was an American businessman, philanthropist, filmmaker, and art collector. The heir to the A&P supermarket fortune, he owned Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and had numerous other business and real estate interests over his lifetime including the Oil Shale Corporation...

's new Paradise Island
Paradise Island
Paradise Island is an island in the Bahamas formerly known as Hog Island. The island is located just off the shore of the city of Nassau, which is itself located on the northern edge of the island of New Providence. It is best known for the sprawling 'Vegas-by-the-sea resort' Atlantis.Paradise...

 (opened in 1962) were taking the place of Bermuda
Bermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...

. Meanwhile, Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....

, St. Tropez, Marbella
Marbella
Marbella is a town in Andalusia, Spain. It is situated on the Mediterranean Sea, in the province of Málaga, beneath the La Concha mountain. In 2000 the city had 98,823 inhabitants, in 2004, 116,234, in 2010 approximately 135,000....

, Portofino
Portofino
Portofino is a small Italian fishing village, comune and tourist resort located in the province of Genoa on the Italian Riviera. The town is crowded round its small harbour, is closely associated with Paraggi Beach, which is a few minutes up the coast...

, and selected small towns on the French
French Riviera
The Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...

 and Italian
Italian Riviera
The Italian Riviera, or Ligurian Riviera is the narrow coastal strip which lies between the Ligurian Sea and the mountain chain formed by the Maritime Alps and the Apennines...

 Riviera were on the jet set itinerary, as well as Capri
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...

. Then from 1974 the Greek Islands such as Mykonos
Mykonos
Mykonos is a Greek island, part of the Cyclades, lying between Tinos, Syros, Paros and Naxos. The island spans an area of and rises to an elevation of at its highest point. There are 9,320 inhabitants most of whom live in the largest town, Mykonos, which lies on the west coast. The town is also...

 were included in the loop.

The original members of this elite, free-wheeling sect were those "socialite
Socialite
A socialite is a person who participates in social activities and spends a significant amount of time entertaining and being entertained at fashionable upper-class events....

s" who were not shy about publicity and entertained in semi-public places like restaurants and in night clubs, where the "paparazzi
Paparazzi
Paparazzi is an Italian term used to refer to photojournalists who specialize in candid photography of celebrities, politicians, and other prominent people...

" – a jet set phenomenon – photographed them. They were the first generation that might weekend in Paris or fly to Rome just for a party. Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...

 captured their lifestyle in La dolce vita
La Dolce Vita
La Dolce Vita is a 1960 comedy-drama film written and directed by the critically acclaimed director Federico Fellini. The film is a story of a passive journalist's week in Rome, and his search for both happiness and love that will never come...

 (1960).

A sign that "jet set" had lost its first glamorous edge was Vogue Magazines coinage of the term "the Beautiful People" in the spring of 1962, an expression which initially described the circle that formed around President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

 and First Lady
First Lady of the United States
First Lady of the United States is the title of the hostess of the White House. Because this position is traditionally filled by the wife of the president of the United States, the title is most often applied to the wife of a sitting president. The current first lady is Michelle Obama.-Current:The...

 Jacqueline Kennedy
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier "Jackie" Kennedy Onassis was the wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and served as First Lady of the United States during his presidency from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Five years later she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle...

. Readers of the 15 February 1964 Vogue could learn "What the beautiful people are doing to keep fit." The two phrases ran for a time in tandem; in 1970 Cleveland Amory
Cleveland Amory
Cleveland Amory was an American author who devoted his life to promoting animal rights. He was perhaps best known for his books about his cat, named Polar Bear, whom he saved from the Manhattan streets on Christmas Eve 1977...

 could fear "that the Beautiful People and the Jet Set are being threatened by current economics."

A more serious economic threat was the 1973 oil crisis
1973 oil crisis
The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...

, which cast a pall over the idea of jetting about for pleasure. A sign that "Jet Set" had passed from urbane use was the 1974 country
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 song "(We're Not) The Jet Set", in which George Jones
George Jones
George Glenn Jones is an American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage to Tammy Wynette....

 and Tammy Wynette
Tammy Wynette
Virginia Wynette Pugh, known professionally as Tammy Wynette , was an American country music singer-songwriter and one of the genre's best-known artists and biggest-selling female vocalists....

 claim they are "the old Chevrolet
Chevrolet
Chevrolet , also known as Chevy , is a brand of vehicle produced by General Motors Company . Founded by Louis Chevrolet and ousted GM founder William C. Durant on November 3, 1911, General Motors acquired Chevrolet in 1918...

 set," as opposed to leading a glamorous, "jet-setting" lifestyle.

The flagging Jet Set gained its second wind with the introduction in 1976 of the supersonic Concorde
Concorde
Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde was a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner, a supersonic transport . It was a product of an Anglo-French government treaty, combining the manufacturing efforts of Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation...

. Scheduled flights began on 21 January 1976 on the London-Bahrain
Bahrain
' , officially the Kingdom of Bahrain , is a small island state near the western shores of the Persian Gulf. It is ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. The population in 2010 stood at 1,214,705, including 235,108 non-nationals. Formerly an emirate, Bahrain was declared a kingdom in 2002.Bahrain is...

 oil executive route and the distinctly jet-set Paris-Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

 (via Dakar
Dakar
Dakar is the capital city and largest city of Senegal. It is located on the Cap-Vert Peninsula on the Atlantic coast and is the westernmost city on the African mainland...

) route. From November 1977 the Concorde was flying between standard Jet Set destinations, London or Paris to New York; passenger lists on initial flights were gossip-column material. The Concorde restored the term's cachet: "From rock stars to royalty, the Concorde was the way to travel for the jet set," according to the Nova retrospective special "Supersonic Dream". However, the Concorde was doomed by its sonic boom
Sonic boom
A sonic boom is the sound associated with the shock waves created by an object traveling through the air faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding much like an explosion...

, inability to achieve global fly-over rights, and its huge thirst for jet fuel, and was retired in 2003. Instead, the Boeing 747
Boeing 747
The Boeing 747 is a wide-body commercial airliner and cargo transport, often referred to by its original nickname, Jumbo Jet, or Queen of the Skies. It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first wide-body ever produced...

, densely packed with passengers, was the craft that revolutionized air travel.

Where English is a second language, "Jet Set" continues its half-life: in the early 1980s the Argentinian rock band Soda Stereo
Soda Stereo
Soda Stereo were an Argentine rock band who are recognized as one of the most influential and important Latin American and Ibero-American bands of all time...

 recorded a successful song "¿Por qué no puedo ser del Jet Set?" (Why can't I belong to jet set?), and in 2000 French comedy Jet Set made fun of this 'art de vivre'.

Late in the 20th century, "wa-Benzi" became an equivalent term in central Africa, from the luxury image of Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz is a German manufacturer of automobiles, buses, coaches, and trucks. Mercedes-Benz is a division of its parent company, Daimler AG...

.

See also

  • Jet Age
    Jet age
    The Jet Age is a period of history defined by the social change brought about by the advent of large aircraft powered by turbine engines. These aircraft are able to fly much higher, faster, and farther than older piston-powered propliners, making transcontinental and inter-continental travel...

  • Pan Am (TV series)
    Pan Am (TV series)
    Pan Am is an American period drama television series created by writer Jack Orman. Named for the iconic Pan American World Airways, the series focuses on the pilots and stewardesses of the airline as it operated in the early 1960s at the beginning of the commercial jet age.Sony licensed the rights...

  • Playboy
    Playboy (lifestyle)
    A playboy is a modern version of a public Casanova — a man of means with ample time for leisure, who demonstratively appreciates the pleasures of the world.The term has also been applied to a flashy womanizer, such as a player, pappagallo, or Don Juan....

  • "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
    Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
    Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is a television series that aired in syndication from 1984 to 1995. The show featured the extravagant lifestyles of wealthy entertainers, athletes and business moguls....

    "
  • Celebrity culture
    Celebrity culture
    A celebrity culture is the structure that influences those deemed to be celebrities.-Brief history of celebrity culture:Any medium can be viewed as a vehicle for creating a celebrity culture. The famous religious books of the world's faiths are replete with examples of individuals who are well...

  • 2,500 year celebration of Iran's monarchy
    2,500 year celebration of Iran's monarchy
    The 2,500 year celebration of the Persian Empire consisted of an elaborate set of festivities that took place October 12–16, 1971, on the occasion of the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Iranian monarchy by Cyrus the Great...

    , October 1971, the definitive jet set party
  • Setjetting
    Setjetting
    Set-jetting is the trend of traveling to destinations that are first seen in movies. For instance, touring London in a high-speed boat like James Bond, or visiting the stately homes that are seen in the Jane Austen films...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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