Gowns by the U. S.

U.S. couturiers, last week and this, unveiled for the first time the American-woman-packaged-in-the-U. S.

The packaging is different from Parisian packaging in several respects.

> It is not so dramatic. Every Paris collection had some spectacular clothes that were bought only by exhibitionists but made headlines. The American designers present good wearable, salable clothes, but little for exhibitionists or oglers.

> The dresses are embellished with spangles, bugles, gold and silk embroidery, but not with Parisian lavishness. Reason: the wages of embroiderers were $8 a week in Paris, are $50 a week in New York.

> The new styles have a shortage of seductive names. Whereas U.S. stores once unblushingly publicized a Schiaparelli pocket, a Vionnet neck or a Mainbocher waistline in a little $8.75 number, this year they may have to be satisfied with "a deep armhole cut" or equivalent. Exception: fall colors (so numerous that no one color predominates) have names like rose champagne, maharaja bronze, tissue-paper blue.

> Skirt styles, short and tight, only occasionally disguised by a minor bit of fullness, suspiciously suggest that U.S. designers have an eye on saving yardage.

Last year's Manhattan openings, following soon after the demise of Paris, tried to establish New York as the fashion center of the world--but the luxurious fabrics were French and the clothes were admittedly Paris-inspired (TIME, Aug. 19, 1940).

This year the fabrics (good and traditional) are American-made except for the lames. And the designers had to depend on their own ingenuity.

The chief trends of this ingenuity show in slender skirts with slits or "back droops" which fall much lower behind than in front; "front peplums" give fullness to tight skirts; the "deep armhole cut" and "soft shoulder" (see cut).

High lights from the collections of leading designers (opening last week in Hollywood and this week in Manhattan):

Howard Greer (formerly Paramount's designer, now turned free lance): fishtail hem lines on daytime dresses.

Irene (of Bullock's-Wilshire, with Greer the leading West Coast designer for the custom trade): slim, slit skirts, the back dip, rounded shoulders, deeper armholes.

Bergdorf Goodman: pre-1914 tendencies with silhouettes narrowing at bottom, peg-top evening skirts, slim skirts slit to the knee, and a general up-in-front, down-in-back movement.

Saks Fifth Avenue (head designer, Sophie): much ado over Sophie's "plastic seaming," and adaptation of Alix and Vionnet's tiny seams and gores which give a gown a poured-on look; a fitted hiplength, fur-edged jacket after Vermeer; men's tie silk for formal dinner gowns; men's sleeve lining for suit blouses.

Jay Thorpe: Elizabethan touches in the form of high standing collars on evening gowns, capes, daytime suits.

Milgrim: Near East inspiration, with harem skirts, "tent pole" silhouettes, camel driver's tunics.

Net impression of the showings: this season's clothes are not much different from the best clothes of yesterday, have no new magic. On their first real test U.S. designers pass--with a somewhat better mark than B.M.I.'s tunesmiths did at the beginning of the radio war--but get no A for originality.

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