Twenty Dollar Miracle

[Music] the world of fashion was once the exclusive domain of a privileged handful who could afford the luxury of handmade clothes and the Caprices of taste that could overnight make a wardrobe obsolete annually its best dressed were carefully counted out on the fingers of two hands but the pictures changed democracy has triumphed and among the inalienable right of 60 odd million American women today is the right to be well dressed in pursuit of this ideal they spend annually $16 billion on their wardrobes and each hangs four and one half new dresses in her closet today she is without question the best dressed and most dressed woman in the world her sensible casual approach to Fashion and her vitamin fortified good looks are envied admired and copied the world over but the real secret of her success lay in that phenomenal tribute to Yankee Ingenuity the fashionable well-made dress priced to sell at under $20 this then is a look at the dress that did for fashion what Henry Ford's car did for transportation [Music] huddled together in the 18 square blocks of New York City known collectively as 7th Avenue are the several thousand dress houses that produce most of what the American woman [Music] wears one of the larger and most successful is Sue Brett a firm that has built a $16 million business on a reputation for good fabric good fit and good fashion all for a very good price the heart and head of the operation is Jack Baker an energetic volw his fellow who lead leaves nothing to chance a man with a distinct flare for fabric and style as well as a keen Instinct for what will [Music] sell the Sue Brett dress begins in a morning conference of Baker and his three designers and it begins with the fabric often cotton women have worn it for at least 7,000 years in the beginning it was a a precious fabric the fiber was hand harvested hand spun and handwoven a slow and cust the operation but in the 18th century with the invention of the gin and the powered Loom and spinning machine it became possible to mass-produce Cotton Fabrics relatively inexpensively and in a short time it became the most widely used apparel cloth in the 1930s texal designers took a fresh look at cotton and came up with ways to give it still more luster new bold textures and Brilliant permanent colorings and the Cinderella of the kitchen went High fashion a revolution in American clothing was taking place the 19th Amendment had given women New Freedom they held jobs they traveled they took up Sports and and fashion had to be functional cotton could be as practical as it was beautiful it could be made water repellent stainproof wrinkle resistant and could even be made to stretch the designers at Sue Brett sketch and discard hundreds of ideas in the process of Designing a new collection only the best are then translated into muslin a little more than a hundred years ago the whole idea of going into a store and buying a readymade dress off a rack would have been inconceivable in the first place there was no such thing as standard dress sizes clothes were simply custom sewn to fit a particular [Music] person but when the Civil War broke out and the government govern needed uniforms for its soldiers quickly and in quantity a system of standard measurements to which uniforms could be cut was devised after the war the idea was adapted to civilian clothing but when the first world war temporarily cut off the supply of French Originals America turned to its native designing talents and a distinctive American fashioned look began to emerge by the late 1920s ready to wear had become fashionably acceptable now working girls and Society matrons rubbed elbows at department store dress [Music] racks twice a year Sue Brett designs a brand new collection of dresses and twice a year buyers for department stores and shops Converge on New York to stock their racks with the things they think the American woman will [Music] buy a full season ahead the fashion magazines and newspapers are preparing her for things to come a new silhouette perhaps a new color a new [Music] fabric since the days of Go's ladyes book fashion editors have been selling her on the idea of new clothes better clothes more clothes they've taught her what to wear and how to wear [Music] it but despite the Cry of some editors cannot make fashion for fashion changes are never arbitrary but rather reflect the temper of the times not even the government could suppress the hobble skirt when it was felt the reduction in skirt Fabrics would hurt the national economy like the weather the only thing certain in fashion is that it will change but a few years ago Sue Brett decided to put in computers and approach the matter scientifically although Lloyds of London holds that it and horse racing are the only unpredictable things in the world there is about fashion a sort of predictable unpredictability and while no one expects a mere machine to forecast next season's New Look the computers can give General directions in color and style and scanning initial orders they tell Su Brett how many dresses to cut and in what colors thus increasing efficiency and preventing costly mistakes so the dress that began as an idea in a conference 6 months ago is now a [Music] reality American knoow and Nature's cotton have helped to make it possible A Small Miracle that's a steel at $20