Spring Openings

Nearly two months before the chestnut trees would bloom in the Bois, spring had come to Paris, the official openings of the great fashion houses had just ended and last week the Buyers were returning to the U. S. with notebooks full of orders, suitcases full of models.

Because the business of designing women's clothes is a major French industry employing thousands of people, the opening of a spring collection at an important house is as hard to get into as the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. Tickets are most carefully issued, ticket-holders must be recognized, detectives snoop about behind the rather shoddy French chairs in the showrooms, ready to pounce on cameras or sketch pads, weapons of the style pirates. Two other facts are important: 1) Though the Rue de la Paix is firmly connected in the public mind with fashion houses, hardly any of the important establishments remain on that brief street; 2) Many of the top-flight French designers are not French.

Looking over their notebooks, American fashion scouts had to admit last week that after nearly ten years the most important designer in Paris remains Elsa Schiaparelli, Italian-born daughter of a onetime Dean of the University of Rome and long-time resident in New York's Greenwich Village. Because he designs all the clothes for the Duchess of Kent as well as Mrs. Ernest Simpson's sport outfits, the next most important designer of 1937 is thoroughly British Captain Edward Henry Molyneux. Though Designer Molyneux looks, talks and acts like a dressmaker, he fought straight through the World War, was wounded three times, wears the purple-&-white ribbon of the Military Cross won for gallantry in action. British too and important to any fashion scout is Designer Norman Hartnell, whose sweeping formal evening gowns are highly favored by long-limbed British peeresses. Despite his name, Designer Mainbocher was born in Chicago, worked for a long time as pianist for Night Club Singer Cobina Wright, later as an associate editor of Vogue's Paris edition.

Though he has as yet no Paris salon, Designer Rudolf Lanz of Salzburg has had such an important effect on the design of sports clothes that even the most important Paris houses are experimenting this spring with adaptations of the traditional Lanz Dirndl (tight-bodiced peasant dress) for street wear.

Notes from the 1937 openings:

P: Stripes are definitely in vogue, disastrous though they may be for ample figures.

P:For day dresses, designers are concentrating attention on the skirts. Some are slashed, some elaborately embroidered, some appliqued with flowers, paillettes, fur.

P:Riding the current interest in surrealism, the younger dress designers are experimenting with dolls, watches, odd springs for evening headdresses; have sketched many a surrealist evening gown. Many of these young men are employed by such venerable firms as Patou and Worth. Their particular inspiration is shrill, ecstatic Christian Berard, a minor poet and successful stage designer. Known as "Bebe" to his friends, silky-bearded Designer Berard designs nothing but stage costumes, but is notably liberal with ideas for his disciples. Shrewd editors of women's smart-charts have already spotted him as an important influence in women's fashions, feel that if any of his young men should click during the next twelvemonth, Christian Berard may have as important an influence on women's fashions as paunchy Jean Poiret did in the years immediately after the War.

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