Fizz & Finery

It was all somewhat giddy. Said one Manhattan storeman: "This is the most uninhibited Easter business I've ever seen. The ladies shop as if they'd been drinking champagne cocktails."

In this first spring of the new peace, with millions of soldiers back home to dress for, U.S. women were indeed spending with the grand air of drunken sailors. Result: U.S. retail sales were up a whopping 50% over 1945, appeared headed last week for a record Easter total of $1.5 billion in women's clothing alone.

Top items on all shopping lists were hats. This year they were big, beflowered, befeathered (see cut), and they cost a pretty penny. Boston's swank C. Crawford Hollidge, Ltd. did a rush business on ostrich-plumed jobs at $65. Chicago's Bes-Ben sold all the floppy, fancy tuscan straws it could turn out at $52.75 and up. "Mmmm, but you'll look delicious," burbled Manhattan's Arnold Constable over a "high-crown cartwheel . . . with pastel blooms encased in spun, sugary net," all for $45. Macy's offered an open-crowned straw loaded with daisies for $39.50.

But everything else was just as greedily snapped up. The advertising manager of one store grumbled: "We can't keep stuff long enough to work up an ad." Customers even waited patiently in stores for goods to come in. Easter outfits were at a premium from coast to coast, with sky-high prices no deterrent.

On the average, metropolitan matrons bought an Easter bonnet for $25, double the prewar price, a $70 suit (rounded at the shoulders, narrow at the waist, wide at the hips), a $15 white blouse (lacy and fluffy), a $15 pair of shoes, a $5 pair of gloves, a $25 handbag and $25 worth of miscellaneous frippery.

For women who could spend more than $200 on their promenade outfits--and there were thousands of them--a shopping spree wasn't complete without a new fur piece. In Denver, Daniels & Fisher couldn't keep up with the demand for $875-to-$1,740 sable scarves.

Perfumes of all kinds sold heavily everywhere. Parfums Weil Paris Co. neatly fell into the effervescent mood of shoppers by introducing a new scent called "GriGri." It was designed to "replace . . . the blockbuster and the robot bomb" with "a dash of the inconsequential."

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