FASHION: Brave New Look

In Aldous Huxley’s brittle fantasy, Brave New World, a voice whispers insistently in the ears of sleeping babies, adapting future demand to future industrial production: “I do love having new clothes, I do love . . . But old clothes are beastly, we always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better . . .”

Addressing 400 fashion experts at a Fashion Group luncheon last week in Manhattan’s Astor Hotel, Allied Stores Corp.’s B. Earl Puckett was stern. “Basic utility,” said he, “cannot be the foundation of a prosperous apparel industry . . . We must accelerate obsolescence.” Reminding his listeners that 1948’s apparel sales had been exceptionally good because of that year’s one-shot “New Look,” Puckett added that what was needed was a New Look every year. “Money that was not spent for soft lines . . . was not spent on other lines of merchandise, but was saved by the consumer. It is our job to make women unhappy with what they have . . . You might call us ‘merchants of unhappiness’ . . .” Concluded Puckett: “We must make these women so unhappy that their husbands can find no happiness or peace in their excessive savings. . .”