however, some New York fashion
houses offered very successful lines of their own as early as the 1930s,
a trend that was developed and firmly established in the years from
1942 to 1944, as a result of the occupation of Paris and state subsidies
of “American design.”" At the time of the German occupation of Paris,
the names of American designers were used, for the first time, as crowdpullers
in an attempt to establish the reputations of American designers
as a mix of celebrity and artist like their French counterparts^ and, thus,
to present American design as at least equal in stature (Buckland 2005:
116). The “long-standing and mutual love affair” between the USA and
Paris, as Sandra Buckland puts it, in which “|t]he American fashion industry
depended on Paris for leadership, and Paris catered to American
manufacturers and store buyers, because they provided a major source
of revenue for the couture industry!,]” h^^l changed (Buckland 2005:
100). While French designers once again dominated the international
stage in the 1950s, the USA had developed its own identity as a creative
force in fashion design in the years during the Second World War.
Indeed, the dominance of French haute couture after the Second
World War was largely dependent upon the support of North American
buyers, who essentially purchased the rights to copy French designs
for the ready-to-wear industry (Palmer 2001: 22, 77). With the help of
fashion magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, they were able to
reach the American woman, who, depending on her financial wherewith-
all, either had a “line-for-line” copy of the designs custom made
for her at exclusive department stores or tailors or bought them, modified
for the requirements of ready-to-wear, at chain department stores
or mail-order catalogs (Palmer 2001: Chapter 3). Though only very
few American women could afford (or desired) to purchase French designs
directly (with numerous fittings) in Parisian salons (Palmer 2001:
Chapter 2), the majority of American designs were oriented on French
patterns.’” Still, the dominance of French fashion design is not initially
evident when looking at the ads in Vogue in the 1950s.
The majority of
advertisements are from exclusive American department stores, advertising
with American high-end, ready-to-wear designers such as Adele
Simpson, Ben Zuckerman and Maurice Rentner, among others, whose
designs interpret French fashion for the American market and are presented
as authentic and original despite heavy borrowing from Parisian
“lines.” At the beginning of the 1950s there are virtually no ads featuring
designers themselves;” rather it is the taste and fashion authority of
34 Anne Soll
the department store carrying the designers’ work that is promoted—
a trend Madelyn Shaw has noted already of the 1920s and 1930s.’^
French designers, naturally, appear in the editorial section of virtually
every number of the magazine in the 1950s, often with information on
which American fashion house “imported” the design in question and
had, thus, purchased the license to make the dress for the customer.
Despite these subtle “tips” of acquisition, French fashion appearing in
the editorial section of Vogue serves chiefly as a model, emulated albeit
at an imaginary level. The actual consumption of fashion takes place,
however, for most readers of Vogue in the 1950s, through the designs of
American designers and department stores. French fashion, then, dominates
the aesthetic imaginations of American fashion consumers and
elites, if “only” indirectly, filtered, as it were—though by no means less
effectively. Ultimately, what counts is the “feeling of Frenchness.”
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