Out of the Rocker

She has ginger-brown eyes, a kinetic smile and the gentle gemiitlich ways generally attributed in home-stitched samplers and anonymous Hallmark verse to that typical, twinkly little lady who is Everybody's Grandmother. Unfortunately, however, Florence Eiseman, 65, is grandmother only to seven little boys and girls in Milwaukee, Wis. To the rest of the world, she is the designer of the handsomest children's clothes in the U.S., and the envy of millions of grandmothers daily beseeched by their millions of daughters to get out of the rocker and learn to sew.

Instead of Bridge. Florence Eiseman didn't wait to get into a rocker--barely, in fact, got out of the cradle before taking to a needle and thread. But not until her two sons went off to college in the 1940s could she find the time to do more than turn a collar or darn a sock.

Other housewives might have taken up bridge, or begun an affair. Mrs. Eiseman turned out pinafores instead, gave them as gifts to children of friends. Husband Laurence (then head of a collection agency) looked at his wife's designs with a sharp, enthusiastic eye, and persuaded Chicago's Marshall Field & Co. to do the same. It was the fussy era in children's fashions, a day that called for ruffles and ribbons and starched puffed sleeves. Mrs. Eiseman preferred simple styles, fine fabrics and an elegance not of ornament but of workmanship. Marshall Field ordered $3,000 worth, sold out in a month. Florence Eiseman, Inc. was in business.

Personnel then consisted of one fabric buyer (Laurence Eiseman), one designer (Florence Eiseman), one business manager (Laurence Eiseman), one seamstress (Florence Eiseman) and one sewing machine (Singer). Now, the Eiseman staff includes a production manager (Son Laurence Jr., 37), and advertising and sales director (Son Robert, 34), 130 employees and 150 sewing machines.

It also includes Gloria Nelson, 38, an Iowa housewife who got into designing in a fit of pique while ironing the endless flounces and bows on her two daughters' party dresses. In the eight years since she went to work for the Eisemans, Mrs. Nelson has had an important hand both in originating styles and in practical innovations like the "add-a-hem" (an ingenious scheme by which hems may be progressively lowered over a four-inch span, simply by pulling one of a series of threads).

Skin First. The Eiseman line now extends through 250 stores in 42 states, has an outlet in London. "It sounds awful," confesses President Laurence Eiseman, "but we sell only to the top stores." Kennedys under twelve own Florence Eiseman clothes. So do Prince Albert and Princess Caroline of Monaco, Elizabeth, Taylor's daughter Liza and well-dressed scores of others whose parents like that unfrilled look. Last week, in Manhattan to display the new spring and "cruise wear" fashions, Florence Eiseman explained why. "I believe," she said, busy knitting something white and inscrutable, "that all children are beautiful. Their skin, their eyes, their legs and arms and hair are what you should see first. Nothing must detract from them." Accordingly, Eiseman dresses generally come in solid colors or in a simple check or stripe. Trademarks of the line are special appliqued forms: sailboats, birds, daisies.

"They are not inexpensive," admits

Mrs. Eiseman (knits start at $9, day

dresses at $20, party clothes often run to $100), "but we will not compromise. We don't know how." From the evidence submitted at every posh birthday party in every borough throughout the land, it is a welcome and most profitable ignorance.

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