Word: dress
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Filene's complained that the Guild was seriously interfering with its spring showings by prohibiting manufacturers from shipping orders made even before the store had been red-carded. General charge was that Guild members had "conspired" to monopolize the dress industry and to maintain their monopoly by blacklisting recalcitrant retailers and laying heavy penalties on manufacturers who broke the rules. Federal Judge Elisha H. Brewster took the case under advisement...
Five years ago the possibility of any group of dress manufacturers being powerful enough to draw fire on grounds of monopoly seemed so remote as to be funny. Throughout the post-War period in which women's apparel had grown to be the sixth largest industry in the U. S., the dress trade had been chaotically innocent of any organization at all. Looking back on those days, dress manufacturers and jobbers remember only a hodgepodge of feverishly busy small houses trying to keep up with an enormously expanding market, trying to please retail buyers who demanded fresh styles...
Among such tricks was the universal and highly developed practice of copying original styles. By the early Depression years it had gone so far that no exclusive model was sure to remain exclusive for 24 hours; a dress exhibited in the morning at $60 would be duplicated at $25 before sunset and at lower prices later in the week. Sketching services made a business of it; delivery boys were bribed on their way to retailers...
...fight this style piracy the Fashion Originators' Guild was started in 1933. At first limited to twelve leading dress houses, the Guild established a bureau for the registration of designs and invited other manufacturers to join. By the end of 1933 it had about 60 members and had received from 4,000 retailers "declarations of cooperation" by which the retailers agreed not to buy or sell any dresses known to be copies of styles originated by Guild members...
Many of these restrictions were embodied in the Dress Code under NRA, and department stores were content to abide by them until last year when the Guild began to operate in the field of low-priced dresses. For some time conscientious retailers had been returning dresses to manufacturers in the $10.75 category, alleging copies in violation of Guild rules. A number of manufacturers of these dresses, hitherto generally committed to copying higher priced dresses for a good proportion of their styles, decided that it was time to originate. They accordingly began to register their dresses with the Guild and were...