Word: gimbel
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Women at a recent showing in Sophie Gimbel's dress salon at Saks Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, may have wondered what the three burly men on the front-row love seat were doing in such svelte surroundings. Obviously, they didn't belong there...
...three were TIME Senior Editor Joseph Purtell, Business writer William Miller, and Robert Boyd, TIME'S picture editor. They were there for a final checkup before doing the Sophie Gimbel cover story (TIME, Sept. 15) on women's fashions and the New Look. As far as the three of them were concerned, the showing went off without a hitch-except for a passing remark by Boyd that one of the elegantly organized models' slip was showing. It turned out that it was a lace-trimmed petticoat-and it was supposed to show...
...Adam Gimbel, a chronic bachelor whom she had met socially some years previously, hired her after a look at some of her theatrical designs-as a "stylist" at Saks. (Stylists were experts in good taste who counseled buyers on what was "chic.") One of her jobs was to go to Paris and buy French models to bring back for Saks to copy. In 1929, he asked her to take over the then slipping Salon Moderne...
...profit, there is some disagreement. Together with the new Los Angeles salon, it will gross about $1,000,000 this year, said Sophie, and "make plenty of money." But in the incredibly expensive business of custom-made women's clothes, a profit is an elusive thing. Adam Gimbel won't say whether the salon will make one. However, Saks will net some $900,000 on Sophie Originals. Though Adam occasionally winces at Sophie's extravagant way of using $40-a-yard material (she keeps nearly $1,000,000 in materials on hand), he is exceedingly happy...
...such speed that many a town ran out of seam tape. Said Harper's Bazaar airily: "Clear your closet and get your clothes into the hands of those who can use them [in Europe]." But the dresses most likely to be sought would probably be closer to Sophie Gimbel's ideas than to Dior...