The strangling hold which the Paris couturiers had secured on the American woman in their absolute dictation as to her fashions in dress, had interested Edward Bok for some time.As he studied the question, he was constantly amazed at the audacity with which these French dressmakers and milliners, often themselves of little taste and scant morals, cracked the whip, and the docility with which the American woman blindly and unintelligently danced to their measure.The deeper he went into the matter, too, the more deceit and misrepresentation did he find in the situation.It was inconceivable that the American woman should submit to what was being imposed upon her if she knew the facts.He determined that she should.The process of Americanization going on within him decided him to expose the Paris conditions and advocate and present American-designed fashions for women.
The Journal engaged the best-informed woman in Paris frankly to lay open the situation to the American women; she proved that the designs sent over by the so-called Paris arbiters of fashion were never worn by the Frenchwoman of birth and good taste; that they were especially designed and specifically intended for "the bizarre American trade," as one polite Frenchman called it; and that the only women in Paris who wore these grotesque and often immoderate styles were of the demimonde.
This article was the opening gun of the campaign, and this was quickly followed by a second equally convincing--both articles being written from the inside of the gilded circles of the couturiers' shops.Madame Sarah Bernhardt was visiting the United States at the time, and Bok induced the great actress to verify the statements printed.She went farther and expressed amazement at the readiness with which the American woman had been duped; and indicated her horror on seeing American women of refined sensibilities and position dressed in the gowns of the declasse street-women of Paris.The somewhat sensational nature of the articles attracted the attention of the American newspapers, which copied and commented on them; the gist of them was cabled over to Paris, and, of course, the Paris couturiers denied the charges.But their denials were in general terms; and no convincing proof of the falsity of the charges was furnished.The French couturier simply resorted to a shrug of the shoulder and a laugh, implying that the accusations were beneath his notice.
Bok now followed the French models of dresses and millinery to the United States, and soon found that for every genuine Parisian model sold in the large cities at least ten were copies, made in New York shops, but with the labels of the French dressmakers and milliners sewed on them.He followed the labels to their source, and discovered a firm one of whose specialties was the making of these labels bearing the names of the leading French designers.They were manufactured by the gross, and sold in bundles to the retailers.Bok secured a list of the buyers of these labels and found that they represented some of the leading merchants throughout the country.All these facts he published.The retailers now sprang up in arms and denied the charges, but again the denials were in general terms.Bok had the facts and they knew it.These facts were too specific and too convincing to be controverted.
The editor had now presented a complete case before the women of America as to the character of the Paris-designed fashions and the manner in which women were being hoodwinked in buying imitations.
Meanwhile, he had engaged the most expert designers in the world of women's dress and commissioned them to create American designs.He sent one of his editors to the West to get first-hand motifs from Indian costumes and adapt them as decorative themes for dress embroideries.
Three designers searched the Metropolitan Museum for new and artistic ideas, and he induced his company to install a battery of four-color presses in order that the designs might be given in all the beauty of their original colors.For months designers and artists worked; he had the designs passed upon by a board of judges composed of New York women who knew good clothes, and then he began their publication.
The editor of The New York Times asked Bok to conduct for that newspaper a prize contest for the best American-designed dresses and hats, and edit a special supplement presenting them in full colors, the prizes to be awarded by a jury of six of the leading New York women best versed in matters of dress.Hundreds of designs were submitted, the best were selected, and the supplement issued under the most successful auspices.
In his own magazine, Bok published pages of American-designed fashions:
their presence in the magazine was advertised far and wide; conventions of dressmakers were called to consider the salability of domestic-designed fashions; and a campaign with the slogan "American Fashions for American Women" was soon in full swing.
But there it ended.The women looked the designs over with interest, as they did all designs of new clothes, and paid no further attention to them.The very fact that they were of American design prejudiced the women against them.America never had designed good clothes, they argued: she never would.Argument availed naught.The Paris germ was deep-rooted in the feminine mind of America: the women acknowledged that they were, perhaps, being hoodwinked by spurious French dresses and hats; that the case presented by Bok seemed convincing enough, but the temptation to throw a coat over a sofa or a chair to expose a Parisian label to the eyes of some other woman was too great; there was always a gambling chance that her particular gown, coat, or hat was an actual Paris creation.
