FASHIONS: Transatlantic Marriage

In the red-draped, colonnaded ballroom of Paris’ decorous Hotel George V, some coals were brought last week to Newcastle. From California, in two specially chartered DC-45, had come manufacturers and models to show Paris the spring styles of San Francisco’s up-&-coming clothing industry. The Californians hedged a plush runway with 1,600 Ibs. of chrysanthemums (“blooming three days ago in California”), set up a blinding battery of klieg lights, and surrounded the show with enough hoopla to make the French take notice.

The French took too much notice. Top designers—Paquin, Schiaparelli, Maggy Rouff, et al.—had all promised to attend the show. But as the beauteous California models paraded in their bathing suits and dresses before buyers and fashion writers, there was not a big-name designer among the oglers. They had decided that California’s bold publicity stunt threatened too much competition. But Georges Berheim, manager of Paris’ huge Galeries Lafayette department store, cried: “Sensational! I would like to buy the whole collection.”

Next day, the designers learned about the California price tags, and changed their minds. Ranging from $15 to $79.95 retail, the California clothes could hardly compete with Paris’ high-priced originals. As one observer said happily: “This is not competition. It’s merely trade.” Members of the couturiers’ syndicate promptly changed their attitude; Schiaparelli and Jacques Fath threw cocktail parties. A round of dining and lunching followed, highlighted by a Government-sponsored party at the exclusive Club de Lundi. Buyers from Cairo, Lebanon, Switzerland and Sweden, who had been trying to get just such clothes as California showed, bustled about trying to place orders.

To the man who thought this all up, Adolph P. Schuman, 38, president of Lilli Ann Co., the junket seemed well worthwhile. As president of the Manufacturers’ and Wholesalers’ Association of San Francisco, he got other members to chip in, persuaded the city to contribute $5,000 towards a total expense of some $65,000. What the group hoped to do, Schuman said, was to combine French ideas on fabrics, ornamentation and accessories with U.S. manufacturing techniques.

In hard business terms, this meant that San Francisco hoped that French designers would develop a new market by designing for San Francisco’s mass producers without hurting the regular high-priced Paris trade. In Paris the San Franciscans also hoped to find new supplies of buttons, belts and other hard-to-get accessories.

To dollar-short Europeans, such trading prospects were good news indeed. By week’s end, the marriage of Paris and California fashions was sealed by negotiations for thousands of dollars in contracts.