The concept for an annual calendar produced by the Italian tyre manufacturer Pirelli was born in 1962, when its UK subsidiary attempted to rival the parent company's sophisticated grasp of strategic advertising. Stellar work at magazines including Town and Vogue earned Terence Donovan the commission to shoot the first calendar in 1963: the emphasis on including products in the images, however, gave way in later years to concentrating on portraits of accessible, attainable girls, in line with the aesthetic of London-based style imagery of the 'swinging' Sixties. Print numbers soared during the 1970s from 4,000 to 40,000 as the calendar hit the mainstream. Since then, this highly influential bench-mark of popular Western erotica has undergone several design overhauls and shifts in ideological focus.