Word: edithe
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...from tonsilitis, a nervous breakdown and the unwelcome attentions of matchmakers. Finally she sets out on a trip to Britain s surviving Crown Colony of Hong Kong, as secretary to a British woman M.P. (the lady may or may not be intended to resemble that noted Socialist amazon. Dr. Edith Summerskill, who took a trip to explore the wonders of Mao's China...
Highest-ranked of the practitioners of this tricky craft is a little (5 ft. 1 in.) Californian of 52 named Edith Head, boss designer at Paramount since 1937. In her autobiography The Dress Doctor (Little, Brown; $3.95; written with Jane Kessner Ardmore) Edith gushily suggests that a designer must drop names as fast as she picks up stitches...
Designer Head is most impressed by actresses who are themselves designing women. Edith's first solo effort on a movie, She Done Him Wrong (1933), was a remake of Broadway's Diamond Lil and brought her measure to measure with Mae West's 38-24-38. "I like 'em tight, girls," growled Mae, and was soon jammed into costumes in which she could not "lie, bend or sit." So that West could relax a bit between takes, a board was set up for her to lean against. Marlene Dietrich, arriving for a fitting, "quickly peels down...
...ideas for covering the foundations, Edith finds it necessary to visit supermarkets, watch women in bargain basements and cafeteria lines. "To look lovely," says Designer Head, who has been married 18 years, "a woman will suffer. She'll wear a waist cincher that squeezes her, boned bras that dig her, heels that tilt her to the sensitive balls of her feet." But it is all worth it because "clothes have to do with happiness, and can actually give a woman personality. A woman in a bathtub has little personality; she's just a woman without clothes...
...next dozen years, blonde, blue-eyed Columnist Edwards was as sassy as she could be for Lord Beaverbrook's bustling Daily Express (circ. 4,084,603). Her weekly 8-in. column grew to a half page as she worked over tempting targets, from Labor's formidable Dr. Edith Summerskill ("Flossie bang-bang") to Queen Elizabeth; she once ran a picture showing the rumpled derriere of the Queen's gown, cattily commented that wrinkleproof fabric evidently was unknown at Buckingham Palace. Drawn by Anne's sharp, sure feline touch, women formed fully 46% of the Daily Express...