In Vanity Fair: A Tale of Frocks and Femininity

by Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd

There are good dressmakers on this side of the water, quite good enough to satisfy any save the hyper-fastidious, but our best dressmakers do not go about their business as do the best dressmakers of Paris. They are business men or women, their French fellow craftsmen are artists. There is in Paris the same type of dressmaker we have here, but there is, too, the artist dressmaker who is something higher in the scale, and it is through him that Paris is the fountain-head of fashion. There is little original work in dress here. Good workmanship we have. Our plain tailor work, for example, is the best in the world; but our makers are content to copy French ideas and French models and they have no such high standards as have the sponsors of those models. The Irish-American dressmaker is said to be, next to the French, the best in the world, but she adapts, she does not create. Perhaps in Paris she too might soar, but here she copies French models well, makes money, and is content.

In the early spring and in August there is a migration of American dressmakers. By the hundred they go to Paris, and buyers from all over the country swell the crowd. Some of the important buyers have set sail long before, but they are men who represent extensive interests, with whom buying is a fine art and to whose expense account the home firm sets no limitations.

One American buyer, representing the largest importer of model gowns and cloaks in this country, a man better known, perhaps, than any of his profession, in the famous Parisian ateliers, sees the models in these ateliers before the ordinary buyer is given a glimpse of them. Yet even then they are no new things to him. He has seen all of their most striking features before.

He does not drop into Paris with the buying flock, visit the great dressmaking establishments, and accept as law and gospel whatever chances to be shown there. He knows what is what. The dressmakers know that he knows and treat him accordingly.

For months he has been on a still hunt for the fashions of the spring that is yet distant. He stopped in Madeira at the very beginning of the winter season, for he knows, as the Parisian dressmakers know, that an exclusive little coterie of the world's smartest folk begins its winter with a few weeks in Madeira, and that in the Funchal toilettes are to be found many hints that will become laws when springtime comes to Paris.

Early in December the hunter follows the trail to Algiers and on to Cairo, though since the automobile has made Italian touring a fad, many of the smart folk spend a part of their winter in motoring, and the Algiers and Cairo seasons are not quite what they were as gathering places for the fashion clans.

A little later the cream of the fashionable world is on the Riviera, and our buyer haunts the Monte Carlo Casino during February. No smallest fashion straw escapes his watchful eye. He knows the fashion leaders of all Europe and America by sight. He can cap each striking costume with the name of the wearer, and, probably with the name of the maker, and he uses his time profitably until, late in the month, the birds of fine feathers take wing once more. It is almost time for Auteuil and, from all over the world, fashionable folk are pouring into Paris.

Spring models are on view there in the great ateliers, and this American receives respectful attention at the hands of the dressmakers, for his orders will be large—and have been large for many years past. Moreover, he has by this time a very good idea of what he wants, and he will demand exclusive models instead of taking the models prepared for the majority of the dressmaking and buying pilgrims. He knew many of the autocrats of fashion when they first put up their signs and, through the advertisement and backing of his firm, many a Paris dressmaker now famous obtained the American clientèle that was the foundation of his fortunes.

A valuable customer this, and there are other Americans of his class who see the best that Paris has to offer. Some of the more important American dressmakers also place large orders, insist upon exclusive models, and are greeted impressively by the saleswomen; but the most of the crowd buys as little as possible and sees as much as it can, and the saleswomen, fully alive to this fact, make a point of allowing the minor dressmakers to see as little as is consistent with courteous treatment. Often a group of little dressmakers will form a syndicate to buy one model and will go together to the great establishment. There, being really buyers, they are politely received, and they all take mental notes of every fashion hint that comes their way during the visit. They study Paris fashions, too, wherever they are to be seen, on the streets, in the theatres, at the restaurants; and during their summer visit they perhaps run up to Trouville to see the fashion show there. They have a jolly time as well as a profitable one, and after a few weeks come home to spread French fashion news from Maine to California, and furnish such adaptations of what they have seen as their varying abilities can accomplish.

The clever buyer usually stays on in Paris after the crowd of his countrymen and of European dressmakers has departed; for the more exclusive models and ideas are reserved for the delectation of the chic Parisienne and the private buyer, and he wants to see what is offered to this clientèle as well as what is shown to the trade. Finally he too sails for home, where much of his plunder has arrived before him. American women often wear a Parisian mode before it has been worn in Paris, and this is especially true of autumn modes; for Parisiennes are still away from Paris when American dressmakers and buyers are securing and sending over their autumn models, and, too, an American woman travelling in Europe for the summer may buy her fall outfit in Paris during August, bring it home and begin wearing it in September, before Parisiennes have left the seashore and settled down to thought of fall clothes. This applies, however, chiefly to the few American fashion leaders, and a radical Parisian mode seldom achieves actual popularity in America before late in the season or perhaps the following season. The models have been brought over and shown, have been bought and worn by the knowing and courageous; but the great crowd of American women is slightly conservative and hesitates to take up any radical Parisian fad until after the novelty has become somewhat familiar through being exploited by the ultra-fashionable few.