Made in California

California’s dressmakers whooped it up for their new fashions. (Items: a baby blue fur coat, a $50 hand-painted bathing suit, a girdle decorated with cherubs lolling on clouds.) Cole of California readied an aquacade, Catalina Mills had a Catalina Island beach show, Tabak of California was going to parade his models on the rim of the Grand Canyon.

Last week, California’s stylists got some publicity they had not counted on. As Hollywood’s pretty designer Dede Johnson paraded her new styles on the rim of the Canyon, she fell over the edge, landed on a ledge 50 feet down. Luckily, she was unhurt, except for bruises and shock; luckily there were news stories. (Eastern stylists cattishly murmured that this was going too far, even for California.)

California’s mushrooming clothing industry had plenty to back all of this whoop and hurrah. Last year the industry (No. 4 in the state) did a business of $320,000,000, up almost 500% over 1939. This year it expects to gross $400,000,000, making it even with Chicago as the nation’s second biggest fashion center. Some sunny Californians predict that California’s dress business will zoom in a few years to a round billion, not far behind New York’s, biggest in the world.

Up from Nothing. The prediction has much basis in fact. Of some 1,000 members of its No. 1 trade association (California Apparel Creators), only 23 have been established more than 25 years. In Los Angeles alone, 50 new ones have moved in during the past year. They came from everywhere. Fred Cole, one of the richest in the industry, is a former cinemactor; Miss Johnson is a former singer who took to snipping only three years ago. One of the oldest, Joe Zukin, is an ex-cattle rancher. Also included: an ex-lawyer, ex-teacher, ex-druggist, ex-jockey.

The industry has one great advantage: it can display its wares in the world’s best showcase—Hollywood—and it cashes in notably through Adrian (he eschews his first name: Gilbert), who last year was named No. 1 U.S. stylist by New York fashion critics. In his Ionic-columned salon in Beverly Hills, Adrian turns out $2 million worth of clothes a year. Yet he and the few other top-ranking stylists (e.g. Howard Greer, Orry-Kelly), gross only 5% of the industry’s total.

Down from Style. The backbone of the industry is smaller, mass-producing outfits who were drawn west by 1) California’s Chamber of Commerce and 2) lack of unions (of 15,000 sportswear workers in Los Angeles, only 4,200 are unionized). All of them took to the area’s informal outdoor living and, with no pretensions toward high style, began turning out comfortable, colorful, casual clothes in bright, modernistic factories as different from Manhattan’s dark lofts as their bathing suits were from those of 1890. By 1943, 85% of the industry’s annual output was going east of the Rockies.

This fall’s fashions in sports clothes, swimming-suits, pedalpushers, etc. (see cut), more than ever emphasized California stylists’ basic creed: the prettier a girl, the more one should see of her. Evening gowns, except for High Stylists Adrian et al., also have a casual look.

California’s clothes cutters ran into the same trouble that the state’s citrus growers had before they combined under the “Sunkist” brand. Each had good clothes but not enough money to advertise them nationally. In April 1944 they formed the C.A.C. to promote a “Made in California” label. It is now so highly regarded that many eastern firms are using labels that mention California,