MODERN PIRATES

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 119, 22 May 1930, Page 14

MODERN PIRATES

FASHION'S GALLEONS

HOW THEY ARE LOOTED

DESIGNS THE TREASURE

Four hundred'persons were recently] arrested in Paris for pirating French fashions. This spectacular wholesale gaoling was done by the order or! the! great Paris dressmakers, creators of stylos that arc labelled "Paris" and sold all over tho world. It brings to I public attention duo of the greatest | underground industries of Kuropc, a; secret industry that lives' on profits | from a traffic in stolen goods. These j goods arc dress, designs created'by the! famous Paris fashion houses, writes ] Bettina Bidwell. j There are several hundred drcss-j makers with establishments in Paris.! Only ten or twelve of these are genuine j fashion creators; tho rest do a-thriving business on adaptations or direct copies! of original ideas of the others, and many are prominent in the inner circle of the pirate "ring." Thousands of women walking down the world's streets are, unconsciously, wearing pirated fashions. A dress may be legitimately bought and paid for, but its design may have been taken without "by your leave" directly from one of tho great Paris designers. To reach its wearer it has passed through many pirate hands, and not a few honest and disinterested ones also. The real creator has not profited by one' penny if this frock has gone through tho secret channels of the fashion bandit. For many years constant publicity has built np the prestige of Paris fashions, and certain names attached to costumes will multiply their selling value. Women in most civilised countries will pay heavily for a dress coming ostensibly from any one of the Paris houses. An American, German, or any other dress manufacturer cau increase his profits by making copies of such clothes, which represent to the woman tho last word in Paris fashions. A little two-by-four dress shop on a side street in Paris, or up an alley, can get £1 to £5 moro from the tourist, or! even the French woman, for a gar'uieut'i by whispering to the prospective victim that it is a Patou model, or a ■ Chanel, or by using any", one of the | other big names. He may also get a \ In.i'ge line and n published reprimand i if one of the owners of these big names j j catches him at it. His 'shop may be j smashed up in a thorough manner and | the law will do nothing to redress him for the wreckage. WILLING TO SELL. The famous Paris dressmakers are perfectly willing to sell their style creations. They live to do just this. Anyone who craves a Chanel dress, a I Patou ensemble, a Lanvin coat can j walk into their headquarters and gratify that desire. Any dress manufacturer who wants to copy one has | (inly to buy it with this understanding, direct from its ■ creator. The price, however, is high.' It averages from £00 to £100 a garment,,and manufacturers are expected, when they enter a Paris dressmaking establishment, to buy several models. Add to this price I (he duty at Home., the cost of the trip Ito Paris, tho possibility of loss and bad selection, and it brings the price of Paris fashions to a considerable figure. This is where the style pirate comes j in. He is not only willing but eager to. sell stolen copies of Paris, fashions to interested parties for a; small frac- ■ Uon of their cost. • He,.■, ruifiCconsider■able risk for very small, profit. The French law protects the creator of Paris j styles by copyright, and tho Paris I dressmakers have set up , a formidable j 1 protective blockade that . tho, fashion j 'buccaneer has to run to get his spoils. In addition to this, there is a j time clement. Tho heyday of the fashion brigade is the brief season four } times a year when tho Paris dressmakers show their spring, summer, autumn. i and winter styles. Pirates must sol! '■ the bulk of their stylo copies in the few weeks that the foreign buyers are in Paris making lawful purchases at the! source. They can, of course, pick up odds and ends of business all the year round from French copyists, but this is only pin money. They must be fast and clever workers during their rush seasons. The dressmakers, from whom they purloin their merchandise, are most alert and suspicious when a now collection of styles is first shown. Nobody can get in either their front or back doors without a written permit to enter. Getting around the guard is done variously, but most efficiently by means of a confederate on the inside.

It is practically impossible for the Paris dressmaker to protect his or her creations from the betrayal that begins in his own house. There are too many opportunities and too much temptation. Employees working for small ■salaries seldom resist. The employeo runs little risk of detection, because the methods used by dress creators to prevent leaks from within are hopelessly inadequate. Even with tho best kind of detective system, however, it would be difficult, for during the making of a collection, every employee in the workrooms sees the clothes that arc being made and many of them actually work on them. The inside pirate is .safely hidden among hundreds of fel-low-workers, . and he cau pocket three or four times his regular salary in profits from the sale of his patron's fashion ideas. NO ADVENTURER. This dress pirate is not a gay dog, living an adventurous life. He is, often, a meek and pallid little man who works in tho cutting-room of a dress creator. He gets a salary of £20 a month, or less. He has; perhaps a large family to support on this stipend, and living in France to-day is expensive. Perhaps he would rather steal than leave his growing daughters with- j out a dot. It is made known to him, by stealthy approaches from the outside fashion bandits, that he can make easy money by tracing off patterns of the clothes ho is given to cut by his famous patron. He delivers his' first pattern to '' the gang" with. a great deal of trepidation. The money is promptly paid and he soon becomes one of the valuable '■'inside" men of the industry. A shabby girl, ono of the many workers in the bare, backstage workshops where gorgeous clothes are stitched and embroidered behind locked doors, may be a "piratess" who smuggles out a limp muslin copy of a dress that will sell in velvet-hung salons for several hundred dollars. She sells her copy for £1 or less, and- both herself and the buyer consider the transaction a good deal. Never, at any time, is the profit on a single stolen dress design a largo one. The specialty shop, the store, the buyer, and the manufacturer will pay very little, but by mass production the pirate can net a nice sum, and he incurs very little overhead.

A great aid to this private . trade is the sketch artist. All the Paris dressmakers have sketch artists working for theni—girls who make drawings of tho dress designer's original costume ideas, from which models are later mado up. This sketch artist joins the pirate crew by selling copies of these sketches.

Tlic most powerful factor in fashion bootlegging is the- foreign buyer. He is also the most-sought-after customer of tho robbed dressmaker. Tlie exclusive Paris fashion creators invito the buyers to their first showings, When

tho precious engraved card that permits one to enter their salons and see the new styles are being fought Cor, tho foreign buyers aro flooded with "bids." They, and their assistants, pass without difficulty the numerous guards hovering ai>und tho entrance to inspect every applicant for admission. MEMORISING- THE GOWNS.

These buyers receive the best seats, and aro waited oit by special saleswomen. A buyer can, with ease, bring along a so-called assistant buyer, who may be ono of tho style pirates. When buyers do bring such a person she shares with them the privilege of seeing and lingering each and every costume at will. She may drink the free champagne or cocktails that aro served on tho opening day, and sate her appetite with sandwiches and caviar. She is, supposedly, helping the buyer to select models, thereby directing a flow of money into tho coffers of the couturior. In reality she is memorising every seam and detail of many of the clothes she sees, so she may sketch them later for her buyer companion, and eliminate his necessity for buying more than a few dresses. This person can sketch accurately from memory ten to thirty garments that have not been bought. Tho sketches are used by the buyer, in addition to his purchases,, to make copies of Paris fashions for women in his homo country a few weeks later on. He seldom pays more than. 1 dollar for a sketch from his pirate underling.

The buyer need not content himself with the sketches thus bootlegged. Every Paris buying office is 'besieged with free-lance artists selling sketches of clothes from all of the collections. Inside men or their confederates also bring them muslin patterns of the clothes, thirty at a time, a day or two before 01 after they have been first shown by tho great dressmaker. Both the sketches and the cloth patterns comprise a wholesale industry in Paris ana may be bought at a low price. Sketches and muslin patterns of ucw ' Paris fashions find their way, via the pirate ring, in a few weeks to French department stores. Here they'are made up and sold in ready-to-wear departments. They go to the smaller dressmaking houses, of which there are hundreds in Paris, and are made up into models, and these models are copied by the hundred for private , clieiits, most of whom are foreign toi'rists. One such Paris dressmaking establishment does a larger business in pirated models in a season than the creators themselves do in tho original fashions, couting its profits in millions of francs. One can buy he-re smart Paris clothescopied from the greatest French dressmakers —for an average of &S as against several hundred pounds- m the original house. Materials aro bought from the same sources that supply tho most impressive Kuo do la Paix houses. This house has never been raided, but ironically enough, was once sued by another copyist for stealing a model that was itself a plagiarism from a famous Place Vcndomo creator. Ihe first copyist won her suit against tho second copyist, and was herself in turn raided and sued later by the original designer. One method used by tho Paris fashion creators for detecting copyists is to employ a woman spy who poses as a private client and uses every means to Sam entry to the style.selling houses. Once in, she looks for models stolen from Her.master. If she finds one she always "likes it very much," but she must consult her husband. She brings the husband next day, and he turns out to bo a non-uniformed policeman, who makes the arrest and seizes the g°The arrest of 400 is a mere sally of no consequence compared to what the dressmakers are planning in the way of battle against their plagiarists .The} ; are being very secret about i , but tl c> sa y that this time they will get the cniilty ones and make them all pay.; The first move is to. bare the existuig French laws on their rights to tUou fashion creations changed. There is a to pending which if passed will make stealing of dress designs a criminal oince punishable by imprisonment- It j the Paris couturiers have then v,a>, all the fashion pirates who now flour-, tl will no .doubt get, heavy sentences.