Word: ohrbach
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Invitations were already out from the rival stores, Alexander's and Ohrbach's, not only for big press showings of originals and their duplicates in mid-September, but also to such big names as the Duchess of Windsor and Mrs. Nel son Rockefeller, who would help attract a glittering crowd to public displays a week later. Though the original dresses had sold in Paris for between $700 and $5,000, Ohrbach's and Alexander's copies, made from the same French fabrics and virtually impossible to tell from the originals, would sell...
...give more tone and prestige to department stores that usually boast of their low-price bargains. A few expensive shops in half a dozen U.S. cities sell a tiny number of custom-fitted Paris interpretations at extremely high prices; cheaper concerns turn out low-cost copies in nonoriginal fabrics. Ohrbach's and Alexander's win their acclaim by making large numbers of line-for-line copies in the original fabric at a price not entirely out of reach...
...headquarters at the swanky Hotel Georges V, Alexander's buying delegation stepped out each morning for buying appointments at 7:30, then rushed to catch the shows, and often worked late into the night studying color samples. There is an elaborate air of secrecy surrounding the whole thing. Ohrbach's buyers, for example, made a point of staying at the less conspicuous Elysee-Parc Hotel, because few, if any, other buyers were staying there. At the shows, each team was furnished long lists of dresses, skirts and jackets to be modeled, ticking off items that they especially liked...
This year Ohrbach's was especially enamored of Yves St. Laurent's No. 82, a black gabardine suit that shows the current new softer lines, with a short, gently flared skirt, and a jacket that features a clerical collar and a row of gold buttons. The model wore an accompanying stole thrown back over one shoulder, and a black velvet beret. St. Laurent charged Ohrbach's $1,800-perhaps twice what a single noncommercial customer would pay for one of the dozen or so other models of the same suit made by the designer. At Dior, Ohrbach...
...collection"-something everyone will want. Also interesting: a Patou white worsted dress that is close to the body, with a flared skirt and four rows of horizontal stitching; it is considered the best trend indicator. "It's the princess line all over again," says a buyer. Like Ohrbach's, Alexander's was active in the Italian mar ket too. It will display a stunning brown wool trench coat by Heinz Riva with an oversize paper-clip belt ("Everything is belted this year-the belts go any place from right under the bosom to down over the hips...