Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1915 — DRESSMAKER WHO DOES BIG THINGS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DRESSMAKER WHO DOES BIG THINGS

Caroline Van Horn, Forced to Earn Her Own Living, Started on Nerve. FRENCH GIRL WAS PLUCKY H©w She Made Good In Great LonI don Eatabliahment and Then BocanM Lender In Her Line In America.

By OSBORN MARSHALL.

(Copyright. McClure Newupuper Byndlcarte.) Here Is a dressmaker who dares to charge as much as eight hundred dollars for a single gown and, what is more. Is able to find patrons who will pay 1L She is a past mistress of the art of dressmaking and she is also an efficiency expert on the business side of her profession. A little while ago, when one of the largest department stores in Chicago wanted to open up a dressmaking department, she was asked to be the chief engineer of the undertaking—to buy all the furnishings, fixtures and supplies, choose a working force and outline a policy, nils work took only a few weeks of the dressmaker’s time, but her fee was fire thousand dollars. Dressmaking is one of the arts, but it takes a pretty good business head to make it pay. The woman who has achieved this success is Caroline Van Horn. Twenty years ago she was a pretty little blue-eyed French girl In a fashionable boarding school near Paris. She was a member of a distinguished French family and looked forward Impatiently to th© time when she should take her place In the social world of the French capital. Then came the news one day to the school that through business reverses her family had been left penniless. She would have to leave school at the end of the term and go to work. To a French girl this loss of money meant a great misfortune. She would have no dowry, and to have no dowry In France usually means to go unmarried, and to go unmarried among the sedate conventional aristocracy of France la—well, somewhat more discouraging than to be a bachelor girl In this country. She must be a governess, of course, for that was the only suitable work for a girl of her standing. Gets Position in London. Caroline’s companion at the school was an English girl, a niece of Col. Tom Jay of London, owner and manager of the dressmaking establishment patronised by the most fashionable members of British royalty and aristocracy. When she heard of Caroline’s misfortune she asked her to spend th© next holidays with her in her horn© in Liverpool. Caroline accepted th© invitation, but, with deeplaid plans for her future, left her friend when they got across the channel and went on alone to London. She went straight to the establishment of the noted Jay in Regent street For a moment she hesitated when she saw the row of equipages that were lined up at the curb, and obscured the forbidding dignity of the six-foot powdered footman at the door. But she hesitated only a second and then she went in and told the first attendant she met inside the door that she would like to see Col. Tom Jay himself. To her great satisfaction, after waiting for a few minutes, she was ushered into the office of this Important personage. "I have come to apply for a position," she said in her best English. “I have come from Paris and I want to get employment at once.” The colonel made some remarks about his surprise that she had insisted on seeing him personally on business of that kind, but there was something in the girl’s manner that made him forgive the intrusion. "We are in need of skilled workwomen. I believe,” he said. “What position do you want?" Caroline hesitated for a fraction of a minute, screwed her courage to the sticking point and answered bravely, “Assistant fitter and designer.” Then she waited in trepidation for the colonel’s next question. Just what £be would say when he asked he- for names of references or where aha had received her experience she hadn’t planned. As a matter of fact, all she knew of dressmaking was what she had learned in the elementary coarse of sewing which she had had in school But the expected question didn’t come. Apparently Colonel Jay took her at her word and he immediately offered her a position with as - high wages to start with as she could have ever hoped for as a governess in a French family. Caroline then went out into the strange city and picked, out a cheap lodging house and wrote to her mother to tell her what she had done and to her school mistresses to ten them that she would never return to school. Kept Her Eyes Open and Made Good. The next thin*, was to make good at Jay’s. She had made up her mind never to let anyone suspect that ahe had come without experience, and this took a good deal of alertness. To begin with she was put to work on her first day under Mile. Manx, who had hem with the great

drsssmaker Worth in Paris, and rite at oaaoe took a liking to Caroline and proved to be an excellent instructor, though she never dreamed how closely Caroline watched her in everything she did. Caroline kept her eyes and earn open to everything that her sapvrior said and did and worked early and late and every minute of the day. If she had told Colonel Jay she was Inexperienced she would have been started as an errand girl at a wage she could not possibly have lived on In London, but as It was she was able to send something home to her family from the first If she hadn’t told this pardonable fib she would have wasted long months learning how to pull bastings, thread needles, sew labels Into finished 1 gowns and pick up pins—and It would have taken two or three years for her to work up to the position she now held from the start At the end of her first season Colonel Jay called Caroline into his office one day and told her that Mile. Manx was going baek to Paris and that he wanted Caroline to take her place. This meant that she would come In daily contact as a fitter with the aristocracy and royalty of England; it meant that in whatever she did or said in working honrs she would have the reputation of Jay to uphold. It also meant more money—a better lodging house, more money to save and to send across the channel to her family in France. Jnst at this time occurred the death of Alexander 111, czar of Russia, and as the widowed empress was a sister of Alexandra, the wife of Edward, who was then prince of Wales, the English court went into deep mourning, which meant a lightning change into fashionable crape attire. For a few dayß Jay’s was besieged from morning till night, and countesses, duchesses, marchionesses and princesses clamored with each other for early fittings. Jay’s workrooms were a sea of gloomy crape and Caroline and her associates were working twqlve hours In the twenty-four. Lily Langtry's Mourning. One of the first patrons in search of this royal mourning to come to Caro*

line was Lily Langtry—then at the high-water mark of her beauty and fame. She, like the duchesses and the countesses and the princesses, wanted to show her sympathy for mourning royalty by donning black. “I loathe black," said Mrs. Langtry to the little Frenchwoman who was, with amazing dexterity, taking the measurements of her customer’s wonderful figure, “but I suppose I must wear It” “I should think that black might greatly become madame,” said Caroline, . already projecting in her imagination the vision of loveliness that the famous beauty would make in the exacting tones of deep mourning. “A demure mode will suit madame’s beauty.” “Oh, but I don’t intend to look demure,” said Mrs. Langtry. “I want to look as striking—as outrageously striking—as I can. I want the skirt to stick out like a ballet dancer’s tarlatan. Put twelve breadths of material in it. That won’t look demure, will it?” _ "But madame,” gasped Caroline, “one does not wear skirts that way nowadays. If I made a gown with twelve breadths, what would Colonel Jay say to me? He would surely discharge me. Surely, madame, you are not serious. It. would be preposterous." : - “That’s just what I want to be,” said the actress laughing at Caroline’s excitement. “If I must go Into mourning I insist on doing it with spirit I want people to think of a ballet dancer when they see me. Really I Insist” With characteristic responsiveness and imagination Caroline caught the idea that Mrs. Langtry had In mind. When the gown was done it was a rare success, and when the beautiful actress, wore it with' the crimson girdle, which constitutes full court mourning, no one could deny that it whs outrageously striking. Yet anyone could tell at a glance that a master hand had designed and executed' the dress. It was gossiped about in London for weeks and con‘gratulati ins were many. Mrs. Langtry’s Wends congratulated her on her costume, the actress congratulated Colonel Jay on having Caroline in his employ and Colonel Jay sent for Caroline to congratulate her on her skllL Established in America. In the course of a few years Caroline came to America and was engaged by one of the leading drygoods merchants of New York to reorganize his dressmaking department

of about eight hundred people. This called for a good dual of executive ability and tact as well as a knowledge of th© art aid practice of dressmaking and the work was rewarded with a very large salary- When this work of reorganisation was accomplished Caroline was sent abroad as Pprls buyer for the same dry-goods concern. At present Caroline, with an establishment of her own, is one of the most prominent dressmakers in the country, and has on several occasions retired from business on her savings for several years at a time. In the course of her experience she has had as patrons hundreds of the bestknown women of the st&ge and of society, among them Emma Eames, Sara Bernhardt, Mrs. Potter Palmer and the duchess of Chgulnes. To talk With and study these women of talent and beauty, of wealth and influence, is Caroline's diversion, whereas planning and creating the clothes In which they act their Varied roles is the serious work of her life.

Jay’s Was Besieged From Morning Till Night.