Registered U. S. Patent Ofice Issued weekly. Subscription $3.00 per year. Printers' Ink Publishing Company, Publishers, 185 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. Entered as second-class matter June 29, 1893, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. VOL. CXXI NEW YORK, OCTOBER 5, 1922 Fashion Versus Advertising No. 1 How the Fickle Dame Scraps Successful Businesses and Gives No Clue How She Herself May Be Controlled By Earnest Elmo Calkins WHEN I was acquiring condi tions in Prof. Hurd's classes in physics at Knox College thirty years ago we had a conundrum never successfully answered. It was this: When an irresistible force meets an immovable body, what happens? Many manufacturers, making articles of wearing apparel, have had occasion in recent years to paraphrase that question and wonder ruefully whether the mighty force of advertising is helpless when opposing the whims of fashion. It is not a new problem, but the rapidly changing conditions of the years since the war have brought it home to more manufacturers more often than when things evolved more slowly and possibly more logically. Still I do recall that twenty-five years ago the agency for which I then worked had as one of its principal accounts the S. H. & M. Skirt Binding, which was spending what was for that time a large appropriation in advertising. One need give but a glance at present styles to know that a skirt binding has about as much chance today as the proverbial icicle in the proverbial Gehenna. The Waterloo of skirt bindings came long ago, of course. Many years before skirts reached their present high altitudes they were too short to need protection, and a business that seemed stable and permanent faded away in a night, as it were. Just what Stewart, Howe & May did under the circumstances I have forgotten, but I do recall that they stopped advertising skirt binding, and even then I wondered if advertising had any redress against the ruthless U-boat tactics of that strange and powerful force which has exercised so great an influence over human destiny since the beginning of civilization. growing When skirts were shorter, and fashion also insisted on as little material as possible in the upper part of the dress, there was some consternation among the manufacturers of dress fabrics. But the change came at a time when stocks were exhausted, and the blow was mercifully softened until spindles and looms could increase the world's visible supply of textiles. And the scanty dresses brought benefit to some. The shoemakers and hosiers rejoiced at the prominence given to these essentials of women's wear, and brought out still more fetching styles at higher and higher prices, and profited accordingly. But one man's food was another man's poison. Soon the corset makers and underwear manufacturers were running around in circles as their sales went down before woman's unswerving allegiance to fashion, and discussions were held with advertising agents as to whether any form of advertising could restore these articles to the orthodox wardrobe. Next women bobbed their hair and fashion instead of putting crimps in the blonde, brunette and hennaed locks of her devotees, put a Table of Contents on page 190 427853 |