DRESS SPIES AT WORK

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21467, 15 April 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

DRESS SPIES AT WORK

FASHION SECRETS FILCHED £500,000 LOST EVERY YEAR More than £500,000 is lost every year by the great fashion designing houses of London and Paris through the increasing activities of fashion pirates, writes the Hon. Mrs. James Rodney in the Sunday Chronicle. Firms who spend fortunes in the exclusive designing of gorgeous model gowns and hats are discovering that their closely-guarded secrets are being filched by clever spies. Within a few days dresses which have taken weeks of thought and work, and represent the latest thing in cut, line, and colour, are, they find, being duplicated all over the world at a fraction of the price of a Rue de la Paix creation. A fashion style which should have graced the exclusive shoulders of a society beauty is soon to bo had by almost any woman. And all the time and effort and money lavished on the original gown is wasted, in a hotel room a few weeks ago 300 sketches of the very latest secrets of the big fashion houses were discovered. The man who rented the room had vanished. But he left behind him evidence of a vast international organisation for distributing the secrets of fashion so cleverly snatched from under the watchful eyes of Paris stylo kings. One document found was a list of agents in various cities of the world who regularly received and paid for advance tidings from the salons. A famous Paris dress designer recently spoke of the continual war that is being waged between the French Dressmakers' Syndicate, an alliance of the famous houses Worth, Patou, Lelong and several others, and the fashion bandits who steal the secrets of their latest models. " We guard our shows of new models with great care," this designer said. " Nobody can get in without a proper card of admittance, and only authorised people are allowed to make sketches when wo give the word. Rut the bandits get in somehow. Or else they get their information from inside by various means." An artist with a good memory makes the best fashion pirate. He or she can watch the models, and with a trained fashion eye can keep the new lines or novelties in mind and then rush away to put them on paper. One or two fashion thieves have even resorted to tiny cameras hidden in the lapel of a fur coat or in a muff." Another dress artist states that a great deal of leakage of information is from the inside. " A fashion pirate will take a girl out to dinner and give her a good time, and will get enough information out of her that way to ruin our new models," she said.