The Press: Castle Column

She shall have music wherever she goes, and flocks of dancing partners, too, if she is dressed becomingly. If you have any fashion problems, don’t hesitate to write me, inclosing a questionnaire honestly filled in, and I will be glad to give you the benefit of my many years of experience and study in dressing the individual.

Paragraphs like this, appearing daily last week under the heading DRESS TO FIT YOUR TYPE on the woman’s page of the Hearst Chicago Herald & Examiner, differed from the accepted standards of such journalism in two notable respects: 1) readers applying for the questionnaire were charged 25¢ for answers; 2) name signed to the column was that of no hack journalist, but of Irene Castle McLaughlin, America’s pre-War Glamor Girl, now a Chicago socialite and that city’s most noted dog-lover. From each 25¢ fee collected, Mrs. McLaughlin gets a portion. Questioners are also incipient customers for stores selling hats sold by Irene Castle, Inc. A ringing silver flood of 1,000 quarters a day last week indicated that Mrs. McLaughlin’s latest professional venture was a big success.

Genesis of the Herex fashion column was a job taken some three years ago by handsome Mrs. McLaughlin as style counselor to the Formfit Co. (corsets). In charge of the Formfit account for the L. D. Wertheimer Advertising Agency was an executive who thought Mrs. McLaughlin had greater commercial possibilities than the Formfit job brought forth. Soon Adman George Enzinger had Mrs. McLaughlin running a retail hat shop on Chicago’s smart Near North Side. When the hat shop was abandoned, Mrs. McLaughlin went into the wholesale millinery trade. As designer and working boss of Irene Castle, Inc., she has toured the West, put her product in 52 stores in 52 cities. Both comely Mrs. McLaughlin and her 11-year-old daughter Barbara Irene are walking advertisements for “Irene Castle Hats.” Calling on the trade, Mrs. McLaughlin often carries along a dog from her dog haven, “Orphans of the Storm, Inc.” Last year the care of 8,000 canine orphans at this Deerfield, Ill. retreat cost her $16,000, a deficit whose liquidation requires the sale of a great many hats.