The Pittsburgh Press (January 22, 1941)
CANDIDLY SPEAKING –
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Fashion center? Why not ask the women?
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By Maxine Garrison
Now you see it, now you don’t. Dame Fashion, always an elusive lady, has gone into a disappearing act that would do credit to Houdini. Honestly, a girl just doesn’t know where her next hat’s coming from these days – in more ways than one.
This case of galloping heebie-jeebies, like so many similar attacks, is a direct though minor outcome of Europe’s current upheaval. It’s one of the few to have any comic aspect at all.
Maybe I’m wrong at that. Maybe there isn’t anything funny about the way spokesmen for various cities hop up to shout:
Look at us! We’re the ones who tell you what to wear. Here are the inspirations, the spontaneous creations, the shapes of things to come. Look at us!
If these are hysterical giggles, instead of genuine amusement, I hope you’ll excuse me.
It all started when the Germans took over Paris. Everyone who could manage it scuttled toward the south of France. Wildest disorder flourished among the haute couture – literally “high dress-making,” but usually an awed whisper meaning the inner circle of fashion. Some said business in Paris would go on as usual; some said they would design with a Southern French accent for a while; some said nothing, but moistened a fingertip and carefully tested the direction of the wind. Members of the international smart set, the designers’ staff of life, were scattering before the wind, and obviously wouldn’t be of much help.
My! My! Such fuss!
New York leaped into the breach. For years, New York has been creating good original designs as well as merely copying Parisian imports, but you’d never have thought so to hear the fuss. An American fashion label, in the words of its press agent, became exotic, startling, something to write home about. Women who’d been wearing and cherishing American designs for years gaped openly at the sudden flurry, but joined the huzzahs just to make the long overdue tribute resound more heartily.
Then news stories started coming in over the wire dated. “Paris – via Berlin.” These protested that the Parisian couture was not dead, was not even napping. They told of new designs, but the designs sounded so half-hearted that the swastika atop the French label was there for all to see.
California was the next to catch the ball (onlookers by this time bore a marked resemblance to those newsreel shots of tennis match spectators, their heads bobbing wildly from side to side). After coyly denying any desire to influence fashions, California has stolen a leaf out of New York’s notebook, and plans to present its own “Fashion Futures” in February.
Now it’s Vienna
Just last Friday, German authorities announced that Vienna would henceforth be the world fashion center. This made a pretty kettle of fish for those politically astute Parisian designers who had been not at all loath to accept titles from Berlin for the continuance of Parisian style leadership. But then they already had a pretty kettle of fish – they were down to working with cloth made of 40% vegetable matter and 60% wood, and designing clothes for citizens whose lives have become restricted and anything but gay.
Ain’t it a mad whirl? Not once has anybody asked the deciding factor in the whole affair – the little woman who merely wears the clothes, and determines their success or failure – for her humble opinion. She is merely the innocent bystander. But poor old Dame Fashion is headed for a nervous breakdown at this stage. Somebody’d better give her an aspirin, and tell her to go off somewhere quiet and lie down for a while – she needs a rest.