In Vanity Fair: A Tale of Frocks and Femininity

by Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the American woman in the Parisian fashion scheme. She pays out more money to the famous dressmakers and milliners of Paris than all of their other private patrons taken together; and, even when she herself is not of the class that does its shopping in Paris, still she swells the receipts of Paris tradesfolk, for in order to satisfy her tastes an army of American buyers goes to Paris twice a year and carries home French materials, French models, and French ideas, which will be incorporated into the output of all American caterers to woman's vanity, from the manufacturer of inexpensive, ready-made frocks to the swellest of New York dressmakers.

In 1893, Worth went to the trouble of looking up Parisian dress statistics and found that the value of the material consumed annually in France for women's dress was two hundred million dollars; that one hundred million dollars' worth was supplied to the Parisian dressmakers and that the American share of the whole amount was more than that of all other countries counted together. The statistics also showed that fully one half of the Parisian dressmakers' sales was carried off in personal luggage,—which, of course, means private sales.

All this figuring was done thirteen years ago and at that time the sales had increased two hundred and fifty per cent within twenty-five years. Since then the rate of increase has been even greater. American extravagance in dress has advanced in great leaps, and M. Worth's figures would doubtless seem small if compared with to-day's statistics.

The dressmakers of Paris are, of course, disinclined to give information concerning the amounts of money paid to them by their private customers, but they are willing enough to give estimates without names attached, and the extravagant expenditures of certain wealthy Americans are common gossip in the dressmaking circles of Paris.

The most important single order for dress ever placed in Europe came from an American source, but, for certain private reasons, it did not find its way to Paris, and there was weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, mixed with the buzzing gossip of the Parisian ateliers when the facts concerning this famous order leaked out.

A bride's trousseau was the occasion for the spectacular outlay, and Drecoll of Vienna was the lucky dressmaker. Just what the bill amounted to, the firm has never been indiscreet enough to confess; but well authenticated reports place the sum at two hundred thousand dollars, and rumour runs it up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

The items were enumerated in the order, but carte blanche was given in every case and all that was demanded was that each garment should be as nearly perfect for its purpose as the firm could make it. Life has nothing better to offer an artist dressmaker than an opportunity such as this, and the Viennese firm endeavoured to live up to the situation.

There was, for example, a certain long cloth coat on the list. It was to be green, of a shade indicated, and it was to have for trimming six Imperial Russian sable skins. The skins were to be of the finest quality and perfectly matched. No limit was set to the price. A simple matter this, in the estimation of the novice, but Drecoll knows better. Three of the skins desired were obtained without trouble, a fourth was secured after some search, a fifth was found far from Vienna, but the sixth proved a will-o'-the-wisp. Buyers chased it from one end of Europe to another. There were plenty of superb sables, but not one to match perfectly the other five, and the maker's faith was pledged, his blood was up. St. Petersburg, Nijni Novgorod, Leipsic, Paris, London, all the great fur markets knew the hunters of that sixth skin, and the quarry was finally run to earth and added to the collar of the unassuming coat provided for an American bride. Not one person out of a thousand could have gauged the value of the furs, could have understood the perfection with which they were matched, but one can imagine that a dressmaking establishment does not organize an all-Europe sable hunt for any small sum.

In that matter of furs, our American women have become recklessly lavish. Everyone can remember the time when even the most fashionable of society women considered one sealskin coat a cherished possession justifying pride. Now, women of the multi-millionaire set will buy a twenty-thousand-dollar sable coat as nonchalantly as though it were a linen duster. One New York importer who caters largely to the ultra swell clique went abroad last fall commissioned to buy three sable coats, two of which were to cost any sum up to twenty thousand dollars, while the price of the third might soar to thirty thousand if the buyer should find what he would consider good value for that sum. There are several forty-thousand-dollar sable coats in this country, and sets costing from five thousand to ten thousand dollars may be counted by the hundreds.

Moreover, the fashionable woman does not content herself with one set of furs, but buys them to match her costumes, as she would buy a veil or a pair of gloves, and will own perhaps a dozen sets, discarding immediately any that begin to show wear or are not of the latest cut. One Western woman bought five fur coats in New York this season, one a superb affair of sable, one a motor coat, and the other three fancy short coats trimmed in lace and embroidery. Now that no one with money spends a summer in a warm climate, the fashionable woman's furs are in commission all the year round, and the American, like the Parisienne, will wear her sables over a summer frock in August, if she is where the temperature is chilly. Naturally the wear and tear is greater than in the old days when furs were carefully put away during half the year, and the modern élégante's furs have to be frequently replenished.