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GLAMOUROUS WOMEN WHO STARTED STYLES

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NELL GWYN, the celebrated actress and mistress of Charles II, helped make the ankle-length skirt The Look of her day

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JOSEPHINE was a young girl from Martinique who impressed Napoleon. As his Empress she introduced high waists.

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EUGENIE, wife of Napoleon III, was a fashion leader who popularized crinolines. Her hats were revived in the Thirties.

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LILLIAN RUSSEL was known for beauty, buxomness and some talent. The ladies imitated her hour-glass style.

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THE GIBSON GIRL, created by artist Charles Dana Gibson, was a model of clean simplicity for American Girls.

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MARLENE DIETRICH showed girls they could be feminine even in long pants. This photograph was taken in 1933.

Are Women Sheep -Or Are Men?

Women follow fashion to look different, daring; men follow fashion because they don't dare differ.

By Geri Trotta

Before the month is out, Dior, Balmain, Balenciaga and the other great names of Paris haute couture will have shown their 1955 spring and summer Paris collections which promise, at the very least, provocative change in women's fashions and, at the most, revolution. For the American male, annoyed by the fanfare (and possibly his wife's tentative maneuvers toward the checkbook), the Paris showings are the signal to start scornful muttering that women follow fashion like sheep.

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Cleopatra was a lady whom other ladies want to look like.

They do follow fashion. No sensible female would deny it. To a woman, the very word, fashion, implies following. The most alluring costume of the century couldn't even be considered a fashion unless enough women wore it. But there's nothing meek or lambish about it. The crux of the question is, whom do they follow, and how, and why?

To some extent women certainly follow Paris. Yet Paris itself represents multiple choice. Each house invariably shows several important silhouettes in every semi-annual collection, and it would take a swami to determine accurately what models are destined for outstanding success. That's why the American experts and editors, who leave their cozy steam-heated flats for drafty midwinter Paris to report the openings, fly about in a tizzy that verges on nervous exhaustion. It requires all their experience, cunning and intuition to try to foretell which fashions women will adopt.

Last summer, for example, in the very collective in which Dior introduced the controversial smaller, higher, flatter bosom of his Newest Look, I counted at least half a dozen dresses with the natural waist and low neckline that carried on handsomely for the disciples of Marilyn Monroe. Many different modes are pictured by the fashion press, bought by American manufacturers and displayed in our shops. Women are constantly confronted by the chance to choose - and they accept and reject scores of fashions each year.

Besides following professional fashion originators, women have long followed other women, The Women who Make Good - with men, of course. Classically there are Cleopatra bangs, the Juliet cap and the Empress Josephine high waist. Nell Gwyn helped hike skirts up above a pert ankle. Empress Eugenie popularized crinoline petticoats (and her hats became an important style in the Thirties.) Lillian Russell reshaped the Nineties with the curving hour-glass corset and hour-glass figure; the romantic Gibson Girl put American women into shirtwaists and leg o' mutton sleeves; Marlene Dietrich sponsored slacks and Garbo introduced the wide mouth and the first flats on unapologetically long feet. Glamorous women set fashion and what they wear may become fashionable. But who ever heard of a Susan B. Anthony collar or a Madame Curie haircomb? Women may be proud of their diligent sisters, but they don't necessarily want to imitate them. They don't want to look like suffragettes or scientist. They prefer to look pretty and to be wooed and won.

Though the basic idea is universal, women express it in diverse ways. They fall into several camps, most of which appall each other. To begin with, there are the fashionable and the unfashionable. (The fashionable can be subdivided into high-style, conservative and flashy. The unfashionable can be classified as dowdy, party-cake frilly and downright dog's dinner.) Above and beyond both, are the women of style. These are the high priestesses, the laws unto themselves. The woman of fashion comes and goes with the calendar; the woman of style is timeless. She modifies fashion to her own personality and it becomes an integral part of her being. The late Queen Mary's turbans weren't, strictly speaking, fashionable, but they had style. So did Isadora Duncan's flowing Grecian gowns. And Irene Castle's bob, which also became a fashion.

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Women are proud of Susan B. Anthony but don't copy her styles.

Whatever school she subscribes to, a woman usually welcomes change - a new color lipstick, a new cut suit, a new kind of fabric. It gives her morale a lift. She instinctively dreads sheeplike sameness and shuns The Ford, the dress worn by everybody else.

Yet few women will accept newness for its own sake alone. Several years ago, for example (Continued on Page 40)

GERI TROTTA is a contributing editor to Mademoiselle and a former fashion-copy writer.

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
Feb. 6, 1955

Transcription Notes:
Made a complete word at the end of the page ("example")