It is only a slight exaggeration to say that if you were a TV watcher back then, you saw this ad five times each day, for fourteen years. In the relentless downhill skid of NY in the mid and late 1970s, as long-established businesses closed, corporations fled to the suburbs, and pessimism about the city’s future became omnipresent, the Ritz commercial remained unchanged. Just three years after its creation, when halter tops, “Gauchos” and Farrah-flips were considered appropriate evening wear, the model, with her tailored white jacket, demure upswept hair style, and aspirations to Lunch at the Plaza and Ski at St. Moritz (or at least look as if she could afford to) seemed about as au courant as a flapper. But, of course, in the long run that was not a bad thing.
When the Annie Hall look was turning stomachs in Manhattan and the outer boroughs, the same commercial still aired, looking even more period piece, but continuing to drive home its message simply and effectively. During the bleak years in which most TV women either emulated the sexless pixie-cut Joyce Bulifant look, or 
the equally passe Shelley Long As Diane Chambers look, the Ritz model with her Barbara Parkins -by- way- of Audrey Hepburn style still held her own. Jumping ahead a few years, one could channel surf from a video showing Cyndi Lauper, Bonnie Tyler or Annie Lennox and, occasionally, catch the same beautiful Lady Who Lunched making her eternal pilgrimage to West 57th Street and being Transformed. 99% percent of the home viewing audience probably could not find St. Moritz on a map, but 99 and 44/100th % of the same study group could tell you where to go if one wanted a fine fur that gave one the soignée air of a seasonal resident of that resort. As the Bronx burned, as a serial killer gunned down young couples in parked cars, as crack and street crime eroded the quality of life in NY to an alarming degree, one knew that she was still out there, still riding that same bus, still crisp and formally dressed at mid-day, and still pensive over her coming Purchase That Would Lift Her Into The Jet Set. In a world in which her commercial was more likely than not bracketed by one warning city children not to play in abandoned buildings (“Every day, children are murdered, or cut, or burned, or hurt, playing in abandoned buildings “ cautioned the 12 year old girl spokesperson ) or one advising New Yorkers on the best way to deal with garbage that did not get picked up, the best way to cope with being laid off (“View it as a new start”) or urging post-rape counseling (“My mother once told me to walk proud and walk tall. But since I was raped, I’m afraid to walk at all”) the Ritz Lady seemed like a memory of better times, and a symbol of good things to come.
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