Germany Enters The Fashion World

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 39, 16 February 1938, Page 15

Germany Enters The Fashion World

ENOUGH TALENT NOW FOR HUGE INDUSTRY BERLIN, Jan. 10. Paris will have to hustle if it wants to keep its dressmaking laurels. The Koelnische Zeitung (Cologne News) reports that Berlin’s new German Institute of Fashions is ready to challenge the supremacy of the Paris gown with a “German line.” The institute, the membership of which includes all designers and dressmakers approved by the Nazis, has issued directions telling German designers what should be • their inspiration for spring fashions in 1938. Though instructed to make their own styles, the designers were given detailed plans and colour schemes for their work. "This activity is setting in at a time when the star of Paris as a style setter is definitely on the wane,” the Koelnische Zeitung said. “Paris is no longer the sole world centre of fashion. A decentralisation process has been going on for a long time. Now is the moment for German dressmakers to go out on their own and further home industries.” Twenty of Berlin’s leading fashion shops participated in the recent show of 1038 gowns. Since German dressmakers can rarely get permission to go to Paris, they naturally flocked to the show. Heretofore, 4 Germany has specialised in the manufacture of “ready to wears” copied from Paris models. For Healthy Taste. Germany’s attempt to create gowns which “correspond to the healthy German taste” and compete with Paris is justified, says the “Koelnische Zeitung,” 1 ‘because there is enough talent now in Germany to give our fashion industry its own characteristics. The export fashion shows held regularly in Berlin prove that foreign buyers are interested in the German mode.” Lest anybody misunderstand the new movement, the Koelnische Zeitung explained that German fashions failed heretofore because they were "more artistic than productive. In this they combined in an excellent way creative power with richness of ideas and taste with good craftsmanship. Thus we have the most important requisites needed to play a leading part in fashion creation. ’ ’ Two factors have been chiefly responsible for the downfall of Paris, tho Koelnische Zeitung said: "Lack of foreign exchange and trade difficulties force foreign buyers to cheaper purchases,” it said. * ‘Added to this, there is the growing competition of the American fashion industry. Fashion designers who work for th€ movies are big competitors and a new centre of fashion is developing in California. ’ ’

The competition of the movies is the hardest thing which Paris has to conquer, the Koelnische Zeitung said. “Designers who make gowns for movie stars must have ‘advance knowledge* because at least six months elapse between the start of production on a picture and its actual appearance on the screen,” the paper said. Following Hollywood.

"The California designers, therefore, are equipped with research facilities and money in unprecedented quantities and can create constantly new and original models which have their ‘test by fire’ on the screen. It is becoming more and more frequent that- Paris designers copy Hollywood gowns.” Germany’s synthetic fabrics will holp it win fashion glory because artificial textiles'are “becoming increasingly prominent in the Paris exhibitions, not only because they are cheaper, but because they can be used in such manysided ways with entirely new effects,” the Koelnische Zeitung claimed. “For a long time there have been no sensations in the field of* fashions—at least, Paris no longer has the influence to put them through,” and it is up to the well trained Nazi industry of fashion to replace it, the paper said. Germany is making great efforts in the coat and suit industry, because the emigration from Germany of leading

“ready-to-wear” experts and factories to Holland and England—most of them were Jewish—has greatly reduced Germany’s exports of ready-to’-wear clothes to Scandanavia and other countries. Nazi leaders, therefore, are frantically trying to close the gap by increasing their production of the more elegant type of clothes which require less material than the mass production in which they specialised formerly.