CLOTHES AND THE WOMAN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 168, 17 June 1936, Page 5

CLOTHES AND THE WOMAN.

The seamstresses, designers and others employed by the fashionable dressmakers of Paris, have joined in the great French strike, and society women in France and England are very much perturbed for they will not bo able to show their “fine feathers” at Ascot or the French Derbv if the fashionable and expensive dresses are not delivered in time. Who will suffer most, the Paris dressmakers or the women ? The former will face monetary loss, and the women will suffer nothing much more serious than disappointment. The Paris strike is an excuse for considering the idiosyncraoies of women of different nationalities and the methods of the different garmentmakers. In the commercial supplement of the Manchester Guardian, an article under the above caption is very interesting. We are told that nine out of ten American women buv their clothes off the peg, ready made. Nine out of ten French women have their clothes made to measure. Britain is a half-way house between the United .States and France in methods of purchasing clothes, though the trend in the last few years has been steadily towards readv-mnde garments. Some attribute this difference to the standardisation taste of the .American customer, and to the more individual requirements of European and particularly French women. The main reason. however, is considered to he the high pitch of efficiency reached bv the American ready-to-wear industry, and the able wav in which it enters for its market. And this high standard is truly amazing. It is almost impossible for a woman in quest of a dress to enter a New York department store or speciality shop and go away nnsuited in the matter of size n>’d fit whatever her measurements. There is no much thing as stock size in the sense in which it is still used in England. Ihc Americans have taken the stock size out of stock. The secret of American success in garment manufacture is close and scientific sizing. Tb«_ sizing itself is extremely accurate. L'nited States 2arment makers take n great deal of trouble to procure statistics of the measurements of different builds of women —and there are a. great manv sizes and half-sizes. The same principle applies in other trades. The American garment manutacturer does not guess—he knows. The system entails carrying heavy stocks, but in view of the immense home market open to him, this is not the handicap it would he in New Zealn.nd. In view of the enormous turnover which no can do the American maker-up can afford to spend large sums on cut, style and methods to achieve exact sizing. Moreover, the American 'woman is an exacting customer, far more difficult to please in nmnts of detail tnn.n the British or Continental woman. The American woman expects a high standard of fit and she keeps garment manufacturers up to the mark.