Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 177, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1918 — Be Own Designer America’s Slogan [ARTICLE]

Be Own Designer America’s Slogan

New York. —Fashions are rarely fixed, but never have they seemed to fluctuate more fluently and perversely than now. Xt not need a Diogenes with a lantertCasserts a foremost fashion writer, to find the reason for this condition. Certain raw materials are lacking; labor grows scarcer every moment, although it shouldn’t with so many women to be employed; and the designers put out in the morning whatever they dream of at night. To the observer these days are fascinating.' To the woman who thinks she has settled the question of clothes for an entire season by buying her costumes at the beginning of it, the situation is not only perplexing but irritating. It is quite useless for the world to go against human nature by preaching standardization of apparel or food. We will not eat the same dishes three times a day 365 days in the year, and we will not wear.the same gown ten hours a day for twelve months. If we can’t get raw materials to diversify our food and apparel, at least we can stlmulate the appetite and the eyes by mixing what we have into new forms. Everyone Plays on Fashions. Viewed from the airplane point of view, it looks as if the entire world of women will attempt to bring out something new in clothes for themselves or for their neighbors. This does not mean that they have ceased to work for the Red Cross. It only means that such work has intensified their desire to dress well before the public, and has brought them Into such an active current of air that they see new things and think of them with brains that might have been almost atrophied from inaction before the war. Stimulate a brain in one direction, you know, and it reacts in all directions. Stimulation is the heart and soul of life, and it is undoubtedly the means of producing the. very best kind of national dressing. It will cause a woman to rebel against looking as if she belonged to a procession in which every member must dress alike. It kindles a flame in the brain, which heats it up and makes it respond to whatever there is in it of creative power. Therefore, every woman becomes her own designer. She no longer goes to a shop and takes the gown that she is assured “everyone is buying.” Once she regarded that phrase as the decree of power; today she listens to it with a shrug of her shoulders and usually insists that that’s the last gown she wants to buy. Heretofore the woman with slender opportunities and rare contact with the outside world chose her clothes blindfolded, led by the hand of the saleswoman to whatever was cut by the hundreds and sold by the thousand. Today she is quite worldly wise. She has seen too much; she has come in contact with the moving world. She may buy a gown that is cut out by the hundreds, but she gives a small price for it, knowing that she can remedy the poor sewing at home, put on some better lace or tulle and add to the insufficient quantity of hooks and eyes—at a cost of less than five dollars, let us say. She is not so easily hoodwinked as she was, because the public was as much to blame for the constant repetition of one model, sold at varying

prices, according to the overhead charges, as the dressmakers and shops. French Women and Clothes. Soon these women will be trained into the same kind of power that has governed France for 300 years. The French dressmakers do not govern the styles in Paris; it is done by the women who wear the clothes. They are artists; they are skilled in the science of clothes, and it is their insistence upon changes and peculiarities, their experimentation in new things, which guides the designing world into a sure groove of success. Mark my words, we are going to get that class over here. through the war. A whole new scheme of things in apparel has, broken loose among women. When they begin to get more and more exacting about variety, when they learn how to cater to their own types, and when they suggest to designers who have heretofore been inaccessible and haughty, then we will create our own fashions, and not until then. There will always be a large segment of women who will take the designer’s word on fashions, their suitability and their popularity, but this grows smaller each month, under pressure of a certain set of circumstances that are overturning the usual schedule of life. You can see for yourself how the stimulation will extend to all the quarters of trade. If women say to a highpriced dressmaker that they don’t want such and such a gown, because it is repeated on all sides and is unsuited to their type, then the dressmaker must design something that is suitable and has character, or she will lose her trade. France cannot fear competition. She approves of intelligent co-operation and until we give her that we will always be in the hands of what she calls the third party; we will be dressed through the judgment of buyers, who have brought from France models that they thought would be popular in America. __ No One Fashion Dominates. Do not expect any of us who write of fashions, therefore; to be consistent. We are telling the news from day to day as we know it. It is quite useless to prophesy. It is silly to say that any one fashion dominates. If we tell you that gowns are buttoned up the back, and then say that we have gone back to primitive drapery in which no fastenings are used, we are not stumbling awkwardly. We are merely reflecting the fact that one woman wears one thing, while another wears something else. This should help you in your own scheme of seasonable costumery. To get down to the bare bone of news, Lewis, the milliner of Paris, has exploited for the summer resorts hats with the largest brims that have ever been worn. If women were in dangei of having a papal decree issued against them for wearing obstructive fashions, as they did when they defied the church and wore the hennln, they would surely merit it this summer in these hats. (Copyright, 1918, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)