Word: midi
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...news stories to back their hunches, ridiculed prominent women with consummate cattiness and indulged their personal likes and dislikes in puffs and snubs. But no Women's Wear vendetta, however vicious, has ever raised a controversy that can compare with Fairchild's and WWD's fervent espousal of the midi...
Designers, manufacturers and retailers are caught in a dilemma as fierce as that of the nation's women: between minis that may be out of date and midis that may not sell. The squeeze hurts, and those who are not directly in John Fairchild's line of fire are not afraid to yell. S. Irene Johns, president of the Association of Buying Offices, an organization that represents 25,500 stores and specialty shops across the country, insists that "by starting to push the midi last winter, Women's Wear killed not only the fall season for manufacturers but the spring...
...Longuette? Although the term midi has now come to mean anything from below the knee to the ankle, it still meant mid-calf at the beginning of 1970. So Fairchild coined the word Longuette to launch his midi juggernaut last January. The paper's Paris bureau complained that there was no such word, but Fairchild knew better. He mailed them a page from his Cassell's French-English dictionary, where he had found it. WWD's front-page kickoff story began: "The word longuette means, in French, 'longish, somewhat long, pretty long, too long.' That just about sums...
From then on, WWD relentlessly pushed the midi. In stories, gossip items and pictures, it pounded the theme: "The whole look of American women will now change, and die-hard miniskirt adherents are going to be out in the fashion cold." In Rome, Fairchild photographers found "Longuette Thoroughbreds" at a horse show. In London, they spotted "Longuette Birds" and "Sportive Longuettes." Back in the U.S., the paper claimed that executives along Manhattan's Seventh Avenue, the central
...Completely" is too strong by far, but many in the fashion trade have indeed placed huge stakes on Fairchild's gamble. Because of the recession and the mini-midi hesitation of American women, fabric mills have slowed down, clothing manufacturers have gone out of business or "into suspension," and retailers are hurting. If hemlines go down far enough, women will have to buy complete new wardrobes; midi dresses, skirts, coats; belts and bags; higher-heeled shoes and boots. That could mean millions of dollars in sales, and security for thousands of jobs. Katherine Murphy, a fashion coordinator for Manhattan...