CHAPTER 8

The Rise of Fashion Forecasting and

Fashion Public Relations, 1920–1940:
The History of Tobé and Bernays
Véronique Pouillard

Anticipating Fashion Trends

The fashion business occupies a central role in the creation, dissemination, and
renewal of aesthetic trends. Thorstein Veblen, Roland Barthes, and other the-
oreticians have underlined the role of fashion as a status builder with the dual
consequences of exclusion and inclusion for the groups concerned.1 Along with
the development of mass consumption society, fashion theorists have stressed
fashion’s ability both to help the wearer transcend social categories and to offer
that wearer aesthetic pleasures derived from adornment. The fashion business is
characterized by a continuous renewal of products that exceeds the requirements
of modesty, protection from the weather, and normal wear and tear. Renewal—
rather than a conception of lasting, permanent beauty—is the key aesthetic factor
in the mass-market fashion business.2 Recent research on the beauty industry has
shown that what is considered beautiful varies in place and time.3 Therefore, it
is crucial to examine the factors that drive renewal, if we want to understand
the functioning of mass consumption societies and the central role that aesthet-
ics play in them. This chapter addresses the problem by looking at the fashion
industry in the more literal sense, focusing on fashion in clothing, but a similar
approach could be extended to other products subject to fashion cycles.
The prominence of style leaders in France increased from the mid-nineteenth
century, with the fashion industry centered on Paris and led by entrepreneurs
like Charles-Frederick Worth, who opened his haute couture house, generally
considered the first of its kind, in 1858. From that point, France reigned supreme
in fashion for a hundred years, providing a continuous flow of new designs.

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During the hegemonic period of Paris, fashion was often presented as result-
ing from the dictates of a handful of Parisian couturiers. Fashion was the “great
dictator,” determining not only the colors and cuts that women should wear but
also the most intimate constraints on their bodies: the height of their heels, the
width and curve of their waists, and the amplitude of their skirts—all subject to
change at short notice. The dresses of the early 1900s, heavily corseted and calling
for round busts and hips, were rejected during World War I and were then fol-
lowed by the flapper silhouette, thin, flat, constraining women to bandage their
breasts. Indeed, the fashion business managed to unify aesthetic trends in the
Western countries, and these trends exercised a strong influence on the forma-
tion of aesthetic standards and tastes. When fashion products were too expensive,
the new aesthetic trends still reached wide circles of people through imitation and
counterfeiting.
Another reading of fashion, however, emphasizes not the power of producers,
but instead the agency of consumers. In the transatlantic fashion business that
flourished after World War I, and especially from the perspective of American
buyers of Paris fashions, professionals acknowledged that the major factor of
unpredictability in fashion resided in the customers’ response.
The danger is particularly important for the new product (produit de la création).
It is a realm in which imponderables dominate, and the clientele is extremely sensi-
tive to these. Who will ever know, for example, why one color chosen is successful
while the neighboring nuance of the same fabric sells poorly? . . . On an economic
level, it is certain that [unpredictability] influences the cost of production and forces
one to sell other articles at higher prices to compensate for the losses due to [the
public’s] unforeseeable disfavor.4

Transatlantic fashion professionals had to manage two sets of factors: the creative
whims of the Parisian couturiers and the mysterious preferences of the consumers.
Fashion forecasting seemed to offer reassurance about the future.
The coordination of fabrics and color samples began during the nineteenth
century among French fabric industrialists. In particular, it developed with
the specially skilled échantillonniers (from échantillon, or sample), traveling
salesmen who offered new fabrics to couturiers and manufacturers. The échan-
tillonniers developed considerable skill in offering their samples in coherent
scrapbooks structured in collections of coordinated colors, textures, and patterns.
Coordination became an aesthetic staple in the profession.5
A second wave of expertise developed during the interwar period, as did new
professional communication skills and impeccable transatlantic networks. This
generation of experts diversified along specialization lines. Color forecasting, for
example, became a skill in itself. In the United States, figures like Margaret
Hayden Rorke of the Color Card Association and Dorothy Liebes from the
DuPont Company perfected the expertise necessary for color forecasting and
made it a profession in its own right.6
The emerging professionals of fashion forecasting issued mainly from
American entrepreneurial and media networks, and they perfected the selection,

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 Rise of Fashion Forecasting and Fashion PR ● 153

adaptation, and dissemination of Parisian fashion trends. The new generation

of “forecasters,” as they increasingly called themselves in the interwar period,
picked trends launched in Paris that they believed were suitable for “translation”
to ready-to-wear clothing on international markets.7 This task required tracking
which of the plethora of offerings in fashion design were relevant enough to make
producers want to bring them to consumers, adapting them to the routines and
constraints of everyday life. Therefore, fashion forecasters came to occupy a cen-
tral place in the transmission of trends between the Parisian laboratories of design
and the fast-growing mass production of fashion, a phenomenon particularly
visible in the New York City area.
This professionalization of the fashion intermediaries developed in a context
of tensions among different practices in the fashion business. While Paris, still at
the center of the fashion world, prided itself on producing unique high-quality
designs, North America developed as another hub, this one promoting a democ-
ratization of aesthetics. This tension was perceptible, for example, in the different
attitudes developed in France and the United States toward the protection of
design. In France, fashion was covered as an art under the law, earning a high level
of authorship protection, like for painting and writing, whereas in the United
States, fashion was considered in terms of the object’s utility or the amount of
technical innovation that went into it.8 This legal asymmetry revealed fashion as
an object situated between art and mass consumption, two domains considered
distinct in aesthetic terms by major theorists.9
Increasingly, the manufactured reproduction of Paris designs on international
markets required the ability to think eighteen to twenty-four months ahead of
the market. The ability to anticipate aesthetic trends became a core competence
in the fashion business. It was crucial for entrepreneurs to foresee not only which
among the many new designs would meet the technical demands of French and
foreign manufacturing, but also which would meet the tastes and whims of the
consumers.
The fashion forecasting profession reached the peak of its institutionalization
during the postwar years. In the 1960s, the Paris fashion world was eventually
able to lay claim to the profession that had so far been the privilege of American
experts. Those who practiced this profession in Paris were called stylistes and their
enterprises bureaux de style. Prominent figures such as Ghislaine de Polignac,
Maïmé Arnodin, and Françoise Vincent-Ricard not only represented the fore-
front of a new wave of trends experts, but also became the new creative generation
itself, relegating haute couture to an obsolete fiefdom of luxury. The stylistes
achieved the mix of trends and popularity that rewrote the conditions of exis-
tence for fashion, while effecting lasting changes on the boundaries between
high- and low-fashion culture. Ghislaine de Polignac was hired by the Galeries
Lafayette department store, while Maïmé Arnodin, after consulting for the
Printemps department store, opened her own consulting office, Mafia, in 1960,
and Françoise Vincent-Ricard opened hers, Promostyl, in 1965.10 These experts
also reconciled two words that had long seemed separated in the French fash-
ion world: “beauty” and “usefulness” (le beau et l’utile), beauty having long

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been associated with high-end, unique, handmade products, rather than with
industrial production.11 Because of this conjunction of generational and systemic
changes, the profession of the stylistes has often been described as a radical 1960s
novelty, but their methods and expertise can be traced earlier than that. In a sense,
this reconciliation of beauty and mass-produced fashions could occur nowhere
more easily than between the French and the U.S. fashion worlds, a transnational
setting in which high-end craftsmanship and the democracy of fashion could be
mediated by a new kind of expert.12
Two broad directions can be underlined in the activities of the transatlantic
fashion experts during the interwar period. On the one hand, these specialists
could develop a bottom-up approach, researching the trends that were aestheti-
cally innovative, whatever their origin, and examining how consumers interpreted
them. In this case, the point was to anticipate consumers’ future demands and
to offer products that were the most likely to meet consumers’ needs and tastes.
On the other hand, the experts could pursue a top-down approach that emanated
from the producer, who was looking for the best way to convince consumers that
a product was necessary and—especially in mass consumer society—could bring
satisfaction and aesthetic pleasure. In this second view, as we will see, forecasting
fashions became something else entirely; it entailed promoting a trend from the
producer, who paid consultants to publicize its products to the consumer.
This chapter looks at both kinds of fashion forecasting activities by American
experts, focusing on two major early figures in particular. The first, exemplify-
ing the bottom-up approach to fashion forecasting, is the female entrepreneur
Tobé Coller Davis, who led a brilliant career in fashion consulting, crowned
by a lectureship in marketing at the Harvard Business School. The second is
one of the founding fathers of public relations (PR), Edward L. Bernays, who
was commissioned to work as a PR consultant to advertise the productions
of fashion professionals. Bernays became an iconic example of the top-down
approach, and his PR specialization made him an early mover in the field of
fashion communications, which proved a major asset for fashion forecasting.

Tobé Coller Davis, the Archetype of Fashion Forecaster

Already in the 1920s, the consulting business of Tobé Coller Davis (known pro-
fessionally as Tobé) was the most famous fashion forecaster in New York. Tobé’s
offices on Fifth Avenue published weekly reports for international and American
fashion professionals. She regularly spent time in Europe, especially during the
fashion show seasons, and she cabled daily news from the Paris openings to her
offices, where her staff assembled the Tobé Report.
Fashion firms, dressmakers, and fashion magazine publishers subscribed to
these reports, which provided them with the forecasting they needed. The pale
blue or cream onion skin paper reports quickly expanded to easily reach between
50 and 100 pages in the high season. Under the headline “Cable from Paris,”
the reports were published in a nearly facsimile form with a typewriter font and
telegraphic style, including the “stops” and capital letters, thereby conveying a

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 Rise of Fashion Forecasting and Fashion PR ● 155

sense of immediacy. Sketches of clothes were prominent on the other pages.

Their technical nature was emphasized, including the front, back, and details
such as sleeves, lapels, pockets, fastenings, and ornaments. Soon, fabric sam-
ples periodically adorned the pages, adding to the details of the cut a forecast
on colors, materials, and textures. The company still publishes its reports, and
New York fashion professionals consider them the best translation of European
fashion design in the industry.13
Tobé was born Taube Coller Davis in Milwaukee, where her father owned a
menswear shop. She studied domestic economy in her hometown before decid-
ing to pursue her ambitions in Manhattan. Franklin Simon, the founder of
the eponymous New York department store and American chain, hired young
Tobé for a mission: “find ideas.” His business was more a collection of specialty
stores than a department store, and he concentrated on bringing Paris fashion
to American women at competitive prices. Therefore, he sent Tobé “to Paris to
find out what kind of accessories the smart women were wearing at the Ritz. Her
reports to the store resulted in excellent business. After World War I she became
America’s First Stylist when she returned from Paris with her own wardrobe made
by Vionnet.”14 Madeleine Vionnet was one of the most coveted and expensive
fashion designers of the era.15
In June 1927, Tobé decided that she had enough experience to start her own
business in fashion consulting. She began with four clients to whom she sold
her ideas in the form of weekly fashion reports.16 A year later, she had twelve
clients and hired two assistants. Fashion firms, dressmakers, and private indi-
viduals could subscribe to the Tobé Reports and gain access to their trove of
information. The reports provided a mass of fashion details, as well as informa-
tion about reproducing fashion designs. Tobé was speaking to a large American
market wanting to keep up with the latest trends, and she therefore selected and
cabled trends from Paris. But she was also successful at popularizing trends within
the American market and at interesting mass-manufacturing and mass-retailing
companies in them.17 Rather than be an actual forecast of the future, then, Tobé’s
work occupied an intermediary position in space and time, situated between
the Parisian present, and markets in the United States and elsewhere eighteen
months hence.
Tobé also gave lectures on fashion and retail, visiting stores all over the United
States and conducting group meetings that could last several days.18 From 1929,
Tobé started to organize her Fashion Forum. During this three-day event, she
revealed the latest ideas seen in Paris fashion openings to a wide public of fash-
ion manufacturers and retailers from all over the United States. The first forum
took place in the Ritz-Carlton New York on September 4–6, 1929, and Tobé
spent six weeks in France preparing for it.19 The forum was arranged in different
sessions addressing new fashions and the question of advertising and promo-
tions, along with a presentation of between thirty-five and fifty new fashion
models. Lectures were given by Tobé herself and by other fashion executives,
including Eileen Cummings, a stylist at Saks Fifth Avenue.20 In the following
months, Tobé replicated this first forum on a biannual basis, holding one session

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in the fall and another in the spring in order to prepare buyers for the high
seasons.21
She incorporated Tobé Fashion Director on May 20, 1930, with a capital of
$5,000 and established her offices at 1540 Broadway.22 The firm simply became
“Tobé” the next year.23 Its chief rounded out her considerable activities with fre-
quent conferences on fashion and retail, speaking at the Ritz-Carlton New York
as soon as she got off the boat from the Paris openings and talking about fashion
buying at events like the New York Convention of the National Retail Dry Goods
Association.24 She also consulted for the Retail Millinery Association and others.
During the 1930s, she started writing seasonal fashion reports for the New York
Times.25
In the spring of 1934, Tobé opened new offices at 500 Fifth Avenue, doubling
the company’s space.26 Annual subscriptions to Tobé’s weekly fifty-page reports
sold for between 500 and 3,000 dollars, depending on the client’s sales volume.
In the midst of the Great Depression, her business was making $100,000 per
year. According to Fortune magazine, she was the “best known women’s wear
merchandise adviser in the U.S.”27 Her list of clients contained over a hun-
dred of the most exclusive in the business, including major department stores
like Macy’s, Bamberger’s, Hall Brothers, Eaton’s in Canada, and Harrod’s in the
United Kingdom, as well as a Milanese retailer, probably La Rinascente.28 Tobé
then employed over a hundred people. She sent her assistants to mingle and hunt
for trends in the “Café Society” circles of Manhattan, Long Island, Palm Beach,
and Newport; at exclusive fashion shows, horse races, and charity balls in Paris;
and at fashionable resorts around Europe. The assistants were to bring back com-
plete information on what the trendy crowd was wearing—not only clothes, but
also accessories, hair, and make-up, everything that could serve as a useful indi-
cator to the fashion and beauty businesses.29 In 1934, Tobé also started using a
different media; she worked on a movie featuring beachwear produced by the
French firm Pathé News.30
Tobé not only worked in high fashion but also advised better and more afford-
able clothing in lines for between $7.95 and $15.31 Her aim was to show what,
from the Paris creations, could be reinterpreted in order to cater to the American
masses. She intended to communicate changes in fashion (an irrational phe-
nomenon that can be defined as “change for the sake of change”32 ) in order to
make them understandable and foreseeable. Moreover, Tobé’s interest in Paris
fashions did not keep her from advocating originality in American fashions.
Toward the end of the interwar period, she expressed her interest in American
designs, supporting the idea that lower-end U.S. manufacturers would greatly
benefit from employing their own in-house designers.33
Besides giving consultancy lectures, Tobé pursued an interest in teaching.
In September 1937, together with Julia Coburn, who had previously been the
fashion editor at the Ladies’ Homes Journal, she started the School for Fashion
Careers in New York. Its purpose was to make it “the first school whose primary
objective is to train women for executive fashion positions.” Coburn served as the
school’s executive director and dedicated all her time to the task. Tobé designed

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 Rise of Fashion Forecasting and Fashion PR ● 157

the curriculum and taught a part of it, in addition to doing her forecasting
work.34
Tobé’s career in teaching, as an external consultant, and at Tobé, Inc. con-
tinued into the postwar era. In 1955, she was appointed director of Allied Stores
Corp., an important American brokerage whose Parisian offices centralized finan-
cial and commercial operations for a number of American department stores
in their dealings with European suppliers.35 “In 1956 a group of friends raised
$10,000 as nucleus of an endowment for an annual Tobé lecture at Harvard Busi-
ness School of Business Administration,” and Tobé was invited to give the final
lecture in this retail series at Harvard Business School in the following years.36 Her
arrival in New York’s high society included her sponsoring an annual “retailer
of the year” award, which was presented at a “bosses’ dinner” that included
the cream of the American retailing business, and also politicians, intellectu-
als, and artists.37 In her later career years, Tobé received numerous honors and
awards herself. In 1941, she won the Neiman Marcus award, and in 1953, she
became a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in clear acknowledgment of
her contributions to the international hegemony of French fashions.
In 1962, the year of her death, her company was still a major actor of the fash-
ion business: “Tobé & Associates[’] main contribution to fashion merchandising
is the weekly Tobé Report, a 50-page analysis of the fashion scene to come. Tobé’s
personal advice was valued highly by her clients. A day’s consultation fetched
a $1,000 fee. Among her clients were more than 250 top retail stores in this
country, Canada, England, France and Australia.”38 The Tobé service pursued its
activities after its founder’s passing. It was bought in 2005 for an undisclosed
sum by Doneger enterprises, based in New York. Tobé was not the only fashion
forecaster of her times, but she was—and retained the reputation of being—the
American forecaster who was the best as transferring and translating the trends
born in Paris.

The Golden Age of Forecasters

Tobé’s career blossomed during a golden age that she herself helped make possi-
ble. From the late 1920s, several other fashion consultants started offering their
clients fashion forecasting programs. The publisher Fairchild, home of the major
trade newspaper Women’s Wear Daily, offered a seminar on the economic situ-
ation and finances; textiles and raw materials; and styles in fabrics, colors, and
women’s garments.39
Another notable program was offered by the New York consultant Amos
Parrish of Amos Parrish Inc., a business that specialized in advertising, sales, and
retail consulting.40 A substantial portion of his activities was dedicated to fash-
ion, especially the events that he ran under the name Amos Parrish Clinic, a
biannual program held in New York hotels and attended by fashion buyers from
all over the United States.41 Running for five consecutive days, Parrish’s program
offered expertise in fashion marketing and provided fashion forecasts. In terms
of marketing, he worked with fashions for the masses in mind, catering to the

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American domestic market. In 1929, 135 retailers from across the country signed
up, including Best & Co., Bloomingdale Bros., and Russeks.42 That same year,
Parrish treated some twenty-five American fashion entrepreneurs—among them
the chairmen of Saks, Macy’s, Davidow, Wannamaker, Gimbel’s, Jay-Thorpe, and
Lord & Taylor—to an informal lunch at the Ritz featuring the Parisian couturière
Elsa Schiaparelli as the guest of honor.43
Between 1929 and 1933, at the height of the Depression, the consulting activ-
ities of Tobé, Amos Parrish, and their New York colleagues flourished, and these
professionals increasingly presented their work to the press as forecasting and
“prediction.”44 Amos Parrish thought that fashion could be successfully fore-
cast months in advance and that “scientific methods” had replaced guesswork,
enabling a much more efficient use of purchasing budgets and inventory.

Edward Bernays: Advertising and Creating Trends between France

and America
Another important consultant was Edward Bernays, who during the interwar
period, achieved fame as “the father of spin.” The double nephew of Sigmund
Freud, Bernays studied agriculture at Cornell University, and then changed career
paths to become a journalist. In 1919, he opened his first PR counsel bureau
in New York, which rapidly flourished and made Bernays one of the founders
of the discipline of PR. Bernays lined up commissions for prestigious clients in
the economic and political spheres. He worked for some of the most interesting
causes, like the NAACP, but he also got enmeshed in highly controversial projects,
like the United Fruit Company in Guatemala.
Fashion fascinated Bernays because he considered it to be an extremely accom-
plished form of PR. In his book Propaganda (1928), a milestone in the PR
discipline, Bernays explained how fashions could drive entire communities to cut
their hair short or adopt a different style of dress. Such fashion phenomena were,
according to Bernays, an extremely powerful and highly developed form of pro-
paganda or PR—he did not draw a clear line between the two at the time. Haute
couture traditionally did not advertise in the mainstream media of the period,
whether in the daily press, on posters, or on the radio.45 Advertising fashion was
a delicate undertaking because couturiers were developing in a paradoxical con-
text characterized by the need to publicize their creations and the fear, increasing
during the interwar period, of seeing their ideas plagiarized.46 Couturiers pre-
ferred other publicity channels: royals and socialites offered free publicity, and
the fashion press was developing at a steady pace. French industries in general
were latecomers to PR, but couture firms intuitively adopted methods that had
strong affinities with PR, a discipline first developed by American experts. There-
fore, it might be not so surprising that among the new recruits was the Parisian
haute couture House of Worth, which hired Bernays as PR counsel in 1926 to
publicize its image more effectively among US clientele.
Worth had been founded in 1857 by Englishman Charles-Frederick Worth,
the first grand couturier, who had adopted the posture of an artist who could

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 Rise of Fashion Forecasting and Fashion PR ● 159

impose his sartorial whims and design innovations on a crowd of European

royals and celebrities.47 In the next century, during the interwar period, the
third generation of Worths were in charge.48 The Parisian firm had developed
long-term American networks, but Jacques Worth thought that it was being
insufficiently publicized in the American media, especially in the press, in com-
parison to younger Parisian haute couture houses, which, like the Houses of
Coco Chanel and Lucien Lelong, had reached the enviable position of fash-
ion leaders on the American market. Jacques Worth subsequently hired Edward
Bernays in December 1925 to organize a campaign forecasting Worth’s fashions
for American clients in Paris and the United States.49 In this case, forecast-
ing was not about predicting fashion trends, but bringing a fashion to the
attention of the media in order to foster the appearance of a trend and create
demand.
The campaign was scheduled for a year, at least, and Bernays prescribed that
it should be continuous in order to be effective. Bernays defined his methods
as a blend of propaganda and publicity. He would not move to Paris, but send
there an employee of his choice to handle contacts with the press and manage
local events. This employee would also supply materials from Worth to Bernays’s
offices in New York. For his media campaign in the United States, Bernays would
target the daily press and fashion magazines, and he would use direct mail. If he
did not consider an event worth advertising, he could still make sure it received
comment in the American press.50 Bernays estimated the costs for the first year
of the contract at $30,000, but he allowed his price to be negotiated down to
$12,000 annually.51 For Paris, Bernays hired Cornelia Lathrop, a New Englander
happily married for ten years (in her own words) and friend of the publicist
Doris Fleischman Bernays, Edward Bernays’s wife. Edward Bernays gave Lathrop
a detailed outline of her future duties, starting with the history of Worth, “the
oldest couturier house in the world,” and explaining the prestige, but also the
difficulties inherent in such a position: “people feel that they are still making
dresses only for dowagers and Queen Victoria.”52 Lathrop’s task was to make
Worth pleasing to the eye among the young American crowd.
Bernays therefore underlined the less obvious, namely, that Worth was also
dressing the jeune fille and flapper. He recommended three major objectives to
Lathrop for their joint PR work for Worth: to induce more American women to
visit the House of Worth in Paris, to “increase the number of retailers and copy-
ists buying his gowns,” and to build goodwill for the firm.53 Bernays’s analysis
showed that Worth’s business mainly entailed private clients, whereas 25 percent
of Paris couture house sales, on average, were made to international corporate
clients buying haute couture for legal reproduction abroad. The latter customers
brought in cash, unlike the private clients, to whom it was customary to offer
credit. There were no royalties paid on Paris haute couture models sold abroad
for reproduction, and it was impossible for Paris couturiers to control the chan-
nels of reproduction for their designs on international markets. The American
market, however, was the chief buyer of Paris haute couture and the prestige that
attached to American clientele was indubitable.54

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According to Bernays, Lathrop was to use the fashion press to publicize cur-
rent styles, and she should place ideas in the trade magazines. She also needed to
obtain further press materials from photographers. To this end, Bernays advised
her to make contact upon her arrival in Paris with Therese Bonney, then a promi-
nent American fashion photographer in Paris. She should give preference to
Bonney rather than either the usual suspect Baron de Meyer or Man Ray, who
the Worths occasionally commissioned but who Bernays dismissed as “stodgy.”55
Bernays also tasked Lathrop with describing collections after the fashion shows.
Bernays hoped that she would even have a say in how the dresses were named,
suggesting that she include among these names landmarks of American culture
like Palm Beach.
Bernays concluded his recommendations with a paragraph on a question that
was especially dear to him: the psychology of the consumer. He therefore stated,
“In a sense, what Mr. Worth really needs is simply someone who will be able
to intelligently interpret him to the Paris correspondents, and who will tell him
what to do and what not to do from the standpoint of both their psychology
and the American psychology. I would go so far, after a little while, as to suggest
changes in the approach to the American customer as she comes in.”56
Lathrop had an enthusiastic start in mid-January 1926. Her schedule was
extremely busy, but, as she wrote to her friend Doris, on Sundays she would
go discover Paris. Her first worry was about her clothes because, she stated, her
happy marriage had made her lose her sartorial conscience. She soon obtained a
budget for Worth clothes, and in the next weeks, was fitted in house for a crepe
marocain afternoon dress, a coat, shoes, a hat, and an evening dress.57 A bit later
she wrote Doris that, in terms of “the stimulation of American clientele,” she had
learned more by wearing her own Worth dresses than in any other way.58
The third generation of Worths continued to cater to a clientele of royals,
including the Queen of Spain. This was one of the endogenous difficulties that
Bernays had briefed Lathrop on before her departure. Younger houses had the
advantage of being able to mingle with artists and the demimonde, using scan-
dal as advertising on occasion, for example, Coco Chanel. Two other prominent
examples of young couturiers tapping into modern publicity methods, and some-
times flirting with scandal, were Lucien Lelong and Jean Patou. Both their private
lives and work converged in the development of modern couture. Patou—young,
handsome, and single—traveled to New York in 1924 to cast American man-
nequins, arguing that the bodies of his American clients differed so much from
those of Frenchwomen that he needed appropriate models, if he wished to sell in
the United States. He brought six young women from New York to France and
went on developing his Patous couture house, which was characterized by his own
mixture of “Americanism,” combining American aesthetic influences and French
know-how.59 Bernays, a pioneer in tapping into the unconsciousness of the con-
sumer, could not capitalize on the scandalous potential of the House of Worth,
and this was making his task difficult.60
From February 1927, Lathrop started complaining to Bernays about increas-
ing obstacles. The transmission of information among different Worth family

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members was slowing down decision-making.61 Jacques Worth, despite being the
public face of the house, was not ready to follow Bernays’s strategies, and “insisted
that he wished his photograph kept out [of the press]. And that the sort of thing
Patou and Lelong were doing was not good business.”62 The younger couture
houses were indeed enhancing their capital of glamour, scandal, and sexiness,
building fashion aesthetics that are still influential in the fashion industry.
Bernays intended to make the House of Worth a star in the fashion forecasts,
but the Worths remained insensitive to the demands of modern communica-
tions.63 The Worths, added Lathrop, could be interviewed only if coached. And
the interviewer needed coaching, too.64 When writing his memoirs, Biography of
an Idea, Bernays later remembered that Jacques Worth was prone to major gaffes
when interviewed in English, which prompted Bernays to limit the couturier’s
media exposure.65

From French Tradition to the American Consumer

For his part, Jacques Worth had his own opinions about the work that Bernays
had commissioned.66 He asked Bernays “what he personally had done in
New York to help” and wondered what he could have done for the $12,000 bud-
geted annually for his services.67 Bernays replied that Lathrop’s presence had only
been planned as a transition, and he attached a list of advertising and publicity
for the House of Worth that had appeared in the media.68 It was unclear, how-
ever, whether all the media coverage had been arranged by Bernays, or whether
some had been published without his help. Lathrop’s departure was scheduled for
May 1, and she was replaced by Mrs. Rene Gibbs Scudamore, who was promoted
to head of advertising at the House of Worth. Gibbs would remain in the job for
over two years. Originally a journalist, she revived the sense of storytelling that
Jacques Worth longed for. In fact, she acknowledged that journalism was a much-
needed background for her present job. In the American press, her position won
rave reviews. She was “as yet the only American woman so employed in a great
Paris dressmaking establishment” and “a great success in that job.”69
In the summer of 1927, Bernays visited Paris and offered further suggestions
about how to reinforce the House of Worth’s presence in New York.70 Jacques
Worth warmed to the idea of responding to the desires of American consumers, as
Bernays had earlier suggested. In this respect, fashion historian Caroline Rennolds
Milbank underlines that American women had refused, maybe for the first time
during the interwar period, a new Paris fashion. Paris couturiers had launched
longer skirts, but American consumers were not buying them.71 Questioned
about this in the American press, Worth replied that American women could
wear either, short or long, as they desired.72 Bernays added, “Worth said that the
French couturier creates for women, is governed by women’s desires and not by
his own whims.”73 The dictatorship of Paris couture was now acting in the service
of the American consumer.
Publicity was central to furthering this impression. Worth’s press material fea-
tured American stars of the times, like the actresses Tallulah Bankhead and Blythe

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162 ● Véronique Pouillard

Daly, the dancers Dora Duby and Marjorie Moss, and the opera singer Kathleen
Howard.74 Press releases issued under Bernays’s supervision carefully commented
on every important order by prominent American clients, whether they were
socialites or governors’ wives, and no matter if they came from old fortunes or
new. One frequently featured client was Paul Claudel’s wife: “Mme Claudel, wife
of the French Ambassador to the United States, who will shortly accompany
her husband here, is having her entire wardrobe made chez Worth. Designed
recently for her by the famous couturier was an evening gown of white velvet,
with front drapery, accented by a long fold. The back is embroidered in brilliants
and pearls . . . ”75
In publicity campaigns, Bernays advised Worth to show young and modern
designs in photographs of evening and sports clothes, including beach pajamas,
along with captions like “Worth has captured the spirit of youthfulness.”76 Several
models in Worth’s collection bore American names. A press caption for the 1927
Bootlegger Suit boasted that it came “with quart-size pockets. A Frenchman’s pro-
hibition fantasy. Worth introduced this model in his Winter collection. Of brown
and white checked cheviot, the jacket is trimmed with beaver . . . ”77 Playing on
different American cultural associations, another caption read, “Quaker Girl is an
interesting new gown designed by Worth for the young girl. It is made of heavy
dark red crepe de Chine with a fascinating new full skirt out on circular lines. Its
flattering Puritan collar is of white handkerchief linen on which is embroidered
in a small medallion a ship motif—perhaps the Mayflower.”78
By the late 1920s, the House of Worth offered a full range of perfumes, cos-
metics, and bath products. In 1928, the company developed a more innovative
type of tie-in product, when it designed a glove for a prestigious New York depart-
ment store. Advertising copy written by Edward Bernays pointed out that it “is
being shown exclusively by Saks-Fifth Avenue and exploited as the only cou-
turier glove presented in Paris or New York. . . . It is pique sewn, sponsored for
semi-formal wear and priced at $8.”79 Bernays’s promotional work on American
markets now went beyond publicity to include helping bring products to market
that were expressly tailored to American consumers.
Shortly before this, in 1927, Bernays developed a historical and genealogical
thread in the House of Worth’s storytelling.80 This storyline encompassed the
historical character of the house, which was exemplified not only by its royal and
noble clients but also by the utterly dynastic character of the enterprise itself. For
example, a series of press releases dated spring 1927 reported that the Worth’s
grandchildren were “earnestly interested in the famous Worth scrapbook, which
originated when their great-grandfather Charles-Frederick Worth founded the
House of Worth.”81
A second thread in the narrative drew upon the position of Jacques Worth
as secretary of a prestigious Parisian trade organization, the Chambre Syndicale
de la Couture Parisienne. Bernays immediately sent a cable for U.S. release
upon Worth’s election in 1927.82 The ancient reputation and slightly faded aura
of Worth’s family business conjured away any impression of commercial over-
competitiveness. And Jacques Worth, who eventually led the trade organization

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 Rise of Fashion Forecasting and Fashion PR ● 163

for two terms, also acted as a determined intermediary between the Paris and
New York fashion worlds. He traveled frequently to the United States with the
intent to develop agreements between French couturiers and American garment
manufacturers.
A third line of storytelling developed by Bernays referred back to the origins of
the definition of beauty in French craftsmanship, underlining the high quality of
the cut of Worth’s garments. This was well exemplified in the following caption:

A simple black frock, perfectly straight in cut with a narrow belt just a little above
the hip bone, does not attract particular attention except for its perfection of cut
until it is noted most carefully. Then one sees that instead of being made of some
ribbed material as a first glance might indicate, the whole frock is covered with close
narrow vertical stripes of silk braid all sewn by hand. . . . This is the sort of thing
which the woman, who can afford to pay a great deal for her clothes and does, is
demanding because it cannot be imitated by the cheaper machine-made copies of
Paris models.83

An original of Worth could make a difference on the American market, which

was increasingly oversaturated by copies of Paris designs.84 The beauty of the
Worth garment resided not in its novelty, but in its exceptional quality.
Bernays continued working for Worth, pursuing his publicity campaigns in
the U.S. press, preparing press releases about Worth’s dresses and stories about the
house and its clients until the Depression hit the international fashion business
hard and the Worths decided to cut their publicity expenditures. The combined
effects of the financial crisis and the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, passed a little
before the stock market crash, considerably slowed exports of Parisian haute
couture.85

Bernays’s Forecast: Reviving Velvet

Bernays’s other major commission for fashions entailed creating buzz around
a specific product: velvet fabrics. His PR counsel was employed jointly by the
Cheney Silk Corporation and the Silk Association of America. The Cheney silk
manufactures had been founded in South Manchester, Connecticut, in 1838 by
Ward Cheney with the help of three brothers.86 Cheney Silks reached its peak of
activity in 1923.87
Bernays began his work promoting velvet in 1925 and pursued this task until
the end of the decade. In his much-read Propaganda, Bernays recalled his expe-
rience building forecasting for velvet in the media. He wrote that propaganda,
whose power had reached a peak during World War I, had since taken new forms.
Further, among the examples of “new propaganda” for the masses, the fashion
business offered the best work.88 In 1925, American velvet manufacturers were
facing a crisis in sales because their product had gone out of fashion.89 In response,
a group of U.S. entrepreneurs banded together as the Velvet Fashion Group
and asked Bernays to promote their industry by organizing a velvet forecasting
service.

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164 ● Véronique Pouillard

In February that year, Bernays’s office drafted an initial project outline that
aimed to develop the general publicity of the Velvet Fashion Group in various
media outlets, with an emphasis on the press and lectures. A “style service” was
set up as an authority that forecast velvet on the U.S. market via five channels:
a mat service to distribute selected style news items to the American media, a
style news bulletin addressed to the members of the Velvet Fashion Group, a style
bulletin for retailers, a photograph distribution service, and a lecture program.90
Called the Velvet Fashion Service and offering “analysis” of consumer “opinion,”
the new service did not actually track opinion about velvet, but rather collected
U.S. press clippings about it.91 Bernays’s fee for developing the Velvet Fashion
Service was $12,000 per year, with annual renewal.92 This and his work for Worth
roughly coincided in time.
In the spring of 1925, Bernays decided that he needed someone in Lyons to
deal with manufacturing and someone in Paris to handle fashion design matters.
It was on this basis that he organized his “velvet fashion service, openly supported
by the manufacturers.”93 According to Bernays, “Its first function was to establish
contact with the Lyons manufacturers and the Paris couturiers and to discover
what they were doing, to encourage them to act on behalf of velvet, and to help in
the proper exploitation of their wares.”94 As he so often did, Bernays delegated the
research: “an intelligent Parisian was enlisted” to visit couture houses, encourage
celebrities to wear velvet in public, and keep track of all velvet “events.”95
While working on the velvet commission, Bernays’s self-defined job was “gain-
ing public acceptance for new ideas.”96 From 1925, Bernays’s services developed
into an extensive forecasting service dedicated to the use of velvet. Bernays kept
his American clients informed through a weekly roneotyped PR bulletin.97 He
also circulated information to the U.S. press in order to ensure the presence of
velvet in the fashion media that would develop consumer interest in the prod-
uct. In Propaganda, Bernays recalled his confidence in his ability to inform the
consumer and thereby increase her desire for velvet; “the result was that what was
at first a trickle of velvet became a flood.”98 Although he did not publish velvet
sales statistics, Bernays observed, “A demand was slowly, but deliberately, created
in Paris and America.”99 He nevertheless did not foresee what would become a
major advertising difficulty after World War II: the media market became sat-
urated with velvet stories and advertising, which produced diminishing returns,
and the velvet market reached the point of saturation too.
Some of Bernays’s forecasts, featuring stars and socialites, did double-duty for
Worth and the Velvet Fashion Service, in both Paris and the United States, and
at the same time. Take, for example, this 1928 press release: “Tallulah Bankhead,
the American actress who has become such a success in London, recently chose a
heavy black velvet evening gown from Worth’s London branch.”100 Similar to the
services developed by Tobé and other forecasters, Bernays sought fashion and style
sources and then arranged for the publication of these sources. But whereas Tobé,
Parrish, and their colleagues tracked new fashions, Bernays focused on the diffu-
sion and promotion of a single fabric, velvet. Bernays was a specialist not only in
storytelling, but also in event creation, in this case aiming at building goodwill

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 Rise of Fashion Forecasting and Fashion PR ● 165

for a product on a long-term scale. In conducting this campaign, Bernays also

engaged in a very powerful type of publicity, relying on the star system. Indeed,
as his campaign scrapbooks show, Bernays used celebrity endorsements as much
as possible, ranging from the wife of the French ambassador in Washington, Mrs.
Paul Claudel, to the actress Tallulah Bankhead, famous for her sex scandals.

Conclusion: The Critique of Fashion Forecasting

In his book Propaganda, Bernays dismissed the relevance of fashion forecasting.
To him, forecasting was not about prognostication, but a form of PR that could
be used, for example, to revive the production of old-fashioned velvet and give it
a new twist, underlining the sensuality and even the scandalous appeal of the
fabric. The use of the word “forecasting” in fashion was indeed controversial
because the nature of the forecasters’ methods was neither clearly exposed nor
scientific, as its critics objected.101 The higher-end New York dress manufacturer
Maurice Rentner published a communication in the trade press titled “In Sim-
plest Words—Fashion Forecasts Are ‘Bunk’!”102 Rentner was lobbying in favor of
higher-quality clothing. Fashion changes, he added, were to be found in subtle
details rather than in cheap fads.
In Bernays’s more moderate view, the consumer came second to the producer,
who had the power to create demand, if he used the right skills—especially adver-
tising and PR—in conjunction with relevant opinion leaders.103 This “invisible
government” of opinion leaders was, according to Bernays, in charge of bringing
ideas to the public, whether these ideas were political, social, or sartorial. The PR
counsel developed several examples of successful ideas suggested by the fashion
industry to the consumer—not only velvet, but also Savile Row fashions in men’s
suits, as well as new trends in shoes, and short hair for women.104
Bernays envisioned his job as helping firms encourage consumers’ desire for
a product, for example, in order to sustain the production of velvet. Rejected
as “something for old ladies,” velvet became, subsequent to Bernays’s campaign,
a desirable and beautiful product when shown in the press on a desirable and
beautiful movie star. In all such cases, explained Bernays, fashion manifested an
“understand[ing of ] the mechanisms and motives of the group mind,” and he
added, “if we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, is
it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will with-
out their knowing it?”105 In this view, consumers were left with little agency.
Bernays also brought some nuance to bear in Propaganda, explaining that pro-
paganda was not a science, but had become a more precise practice. Another
important nuance was the possible resistance of the public to a fad, a fashion,
a product, or an idea. “The public has its own standards and demands and
habits. You may modify them, but you dare not run counter them. You can-
not persuade a whole generation of women to wear long skirts, but you may,
by working through leaders of fashion, persuade them to wear evening dresses
which are long in the back . . . . Both business and the public have their own
personalities which must somehow be brought into a friendly agreement.”106 He

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166 ● Véronique Pouillard

concluded, “Modern business must have its finger continuously on the public
pulse.”107 Far from being contradictory, this statement shows that Bernays had
a perfect understanding of the mechanisms of fashion and was able to theorize
quite accurately its system of diffusion and reception. But Bernays’s own endeav-
ors in the fashion business have been mixed. Worth was not fully convinced of
Bernays’s talent. For the Velvet Fashion Group, Bernays undertook promotion
rather than actual forecasting. Bernays was a PR pioneer, but it is remarkable that
less famous fashion consultants like Tobé were actually more advanced in the
promotion of fashions.
Tobé developed forecasting in the opposite way from Bernays, not in support
of one product, but as permanent research for new products, lines, and colors.
She and her employees researched trends by observing what trendsetters were
wearing and how in order to understand what, among an already vast array of
products, manufacturers could reproduce and sell. She therefore used a more flex-
ible approach when seeking the owners of aesthetic capital, thereby prefiguring
the 1960s stylists and even—although working with different media—the trend
hunters of the present day. Tobé trendsetters could be socialites, but also random,
unknown passers-by at the beach or on the streets of Paris. Tobé’s practices pre-
figured contemporary developments in the fashion industry. Today, the links of
the fashion industry with the consumers have become strategic, and essential in
the development of new products.108
It is certainly relevant that while Tobé pursued a successful career in fashion
consulting, leaving behind her a sound enterprise still active today, Bernays did
not persist in the fashion sector. Instead, he accumulated expertise and moved on
to other clients and increasingly for cases linked to social and political causes.109
He had indeed understood fashion’s general mechanism well, but did not pos-
sess the fascination for and knowledge of the product that characterized Tobé.
Nonetheless, Bernays and Tobé were both key figures in the fashion business,
having been able to develop hegemonic tastes on international markets. Both
of their careers show how understanding and shaping globalizing aesthetics and
trends had become a profession.

Notes
1. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899; Boston, 1973).
2. Bruno Remaury, “Les usages culturels du mot design,” Mode de recherche 9 (2010):
9.
3. Geoffrey G. Jones, Beauty Imagined, A History of the Global Beauty Industry
(Oxford, UK, 2011).
4. Claude A. Rouzaud, “Un problème d’intérêt national: Les industries du luxe” (PhD
diss., Université de Strasbourg, 1946), 45.
5. Thierry Maillet, “Sample Companies: The Unknown Mediator Companies in the
Fashion and Textile Industries” (unpublished paper, no date); and Maillet, “The
First French Prediction Companies were Textile Sample Companies in late 19th
Century,” paper presented at the Pasold Conference, University of Wolverhampton,
September 8–9, 2010. The author kindly shared these two manuscripts with me.

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 Rise of Fashion Forecasting and Fashion PR ● 167

6. Regina L. Blaszczyk, The Color Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2012). The author
kindly sent me her introduction and chapter 7 while her book was still in
production.
7. Forecasting also developed in other fields, most prominently in economics,
although there is no certainty that the fashion experts were invoking the eco-
nomic forecasting experience when calling themselves “forecasters.” See Walter
A. Friedman, “The Rise of Business Forecasting Agencies in the United States,”
Harvard Business School Working Paper 07-045, January 2007.
8. Véronique Pouillard, “Design Piracy in the Fashion Industries of Paris and
New York in the Interwar Years,” Business History Review 85 (Summer 2011):
319–44.
9. Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Christian Lenhardt (London, 1984).
10. Didier Grumbach, Histoires de la mode (Paris, 1993), 149–50.
11. Remaury, “Les usages culturels du mot design,” 6; Sophie Chapdelaine de
Montvalon, Le beau pour tous (Paris, 2009).
12. Jassica Daves, Ready-Made Miracle: The American Story of Fashion for the Millions
(New York, 1967), 15.
13. Interview with Terri Cook, New York, June 15, 2008.
14. Harvard Business School, Baker Library, Resseguie Collection (hereafter: Baker,
Resseguie), case 5, Women’s Wear Daily (hereafter: WWD), December 26, 1962,
15; italics in original.
15. Pamela Golbin, Madeleine Vionnet: Puriste de la mode (Paris, 2009).
16. “Business Notes,” New York Times (hereafter: NYT) (June 17, 1939): 32.
17. Among numerous examples, see Fashion Institute of Technology, Gladys Marcus
Library, Special Collections (hereafter cited as FIT), “Summing it up in brief—here
is our credo on skirt widths for the coming fall . . . ,” Tobé Report, June 2, 1938,
2D.
18. “Tobe Outlines Fashion Program in St. Louis Department Store,” WWD, Octo-
ber 21, 1929, sec. 1, p. 16.
19. “Tobe to Sail for Europe on July 7,” WWD, June 7, 1929, sec. 1, p. 18.
20. “Tobe Forum to Interpret New Apparel Styles,” WWD, August 28, 1939, sec. 1,
p. 1.
21. “2d Tobe Style Forum at Ritz March 25 to 27,” WWD, November 19, 1929, sec.
1, p. 2.
22. “New Incorporations,” NYT, May 21, 1930, 51.
23. “Corporate Changes,” NYT, January 31, 1931: 34.
24. “Mannish Styles Coming,” NYT, January 12, 1933, 32; “Coordination Retail
Topic,” NYT (June 2, 1929): N18; “Dry Goods Men See Need for Big Drive,”
NYT, June 20, 1930, 44.
25. “Herbert H. Davis,” NYT, March 13, 1934, 24.
26. “New Home of Tobe Officially Opened,” WWD, May 1, 1934, 2.
27. “Tobé,” Fortune, June 1934, 44.
28. “Many World Events Influencing Styles,” NYT, March 1, 1936, F9; “Business
Notes,” NYT, September 26, 1934, 30.
29. “Tobé,” Fortune, June 1934, 44.
30. “Tobe Works With Pathé on Picture,” WWD, June 19, 1934, sec. 1, p. 31.
31. “Sports Dresses Popular,” NYT, August 11, 1935, F10.
32. Roland Barthes, Système de la Mode (Paris, 1967).
33. “Designers Called Mass Dress Need,” NYT, December 20, 1949, 48.

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168 ● Véronique Pouillard

34. “To Establish Fashion School,” NYT, March 4, 1937, 42.

35. Baker, “Resseguie”, case 5, WWD, December 26, 1962, 15.
36. Ibid.
37. “Retailing Award Announced,” NYT, December 13, 1956, 48.
38. Baker, Resseguie, case 5, WWD, December 26, 1962, 15
39. “Style and Trade to Be Forecast at Seminar,” WWD, June 19, 1930, sec. 1, pp. 1,
23.
40. Elizabeth Hawes, Fashion is Spinach (New York, 1938).
41. “Mannish Styles Coming,” NYT, January 12, 1933, 32.
42. “135 of America’s Best Stores Have Made Reservations for the Amos Parrish Fashion
Merchandising Clinics,” WWD, June 27, 1929, sec. 1, p. 10.
43. “Parrish to Honor Mme. Schiaparelli at Lunch,” WWD, November 27, 1929, sec.
1, p. 2.
44. “Winter Sports Wear Faces Good Outlook,” NYT, October 30, 1932, F8.
45. Werner Sombart, Luxus und Kapitalismus (Munich, 1922).
46. Nancy J. Troy, Couture Culture (Cambridge, MA, 2003).
47. Library of Congress, Edward L. Bernays Papers (hereafter: LC, ELB) box 459,
Bernays, “Biography of an Idea,” file: Worth, Jacques, 1.
48. Ibid., 2.
49. LC, ELB, box 421, “Memorandum for M. Jacques Worth,” December 11, 1926, 1.
50. Ibid., 2–3.
51. Ibid., 2.
52. LC, ELB, box 421, Undated report from Edward L. Bernays, 1.
53. Ibid., 1.
54. Didier Grumbach, Histoires de la mode; Pouillard, “Design Piracy.”
55. LC, ELB, box 421, undated report from Bernays to Lathrop, 3.
56. Ibid., 4.
57. LC, ELB, box 421, Cornelia Lathrop to Edward L. Bernays, Febebruary 17, 1927,
1.
58. LC, ELB, box 421, Cornelia Lathrop to Doris Fleischman Bernays, [1927].
59. Caroline Evans, “Jean Patou’s American Mannequins: Early Fashion Shows and
Modernism,” Modernism/modernity 15, no. 2 (April 2008): 243–63.
60. LC, ELB, box 421, Cornelia Lathrop to Edward L. Bernays, February 8, 1927, 1.
61. LC, ELB, box 421, Cornelia Lathrop to Edward L. Bernays, February 16, 1927, 1.
62. Ibid., 1.
63. Ibid., 2.
64. LC, ELB, box 421, Cornelia Lathrop to Edward L. Bernays, Feb. 21, 1927.
65. LC, ELB, box 459, Bernays, “Biography of an Idea,” file: Worth, Jacques, 2.
66. LC, ELB, box 421, Jacques Worth to Edward L. Bernays, March 17, 1927, 1.
67. Ibid., 2.
68. LC, ELB, box 421, Bernays to Jacques Worth, April 5, 1927.
69. LC, ELB, box 421, press clipping from Providence, R. I. Tribune, June 10, 1929.
70. LC, ELB, box 421, Bernays to Worth, July 22, 1927 and Aug. 3, 1927.
71. Caroline Rennolds Milbank, New York Fashion: The Evolution of American Style
(New York, 1996), 72.
72. LC, ELB, box 459, Bernays, “Biography of an Idea,” file: Worth, Jacques.
73. Ibid.
74. LC, ELB, box 459.
75. LC, ELB, box I 696, press release, Edward L. Bernays, April 26, 1927.

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 Rise of Fashion Forecasting and Fashion PR ● 169

76. LC, ELB, box I 696.

77. Ibid.
78. LC, ELB, box I 696, A Paris Puritan, 1927.
79. LC, ELB, box I 696.
80. LC, ELB, box 459.
81. LC, ELB, box I 696.
82. Ibid.
83. LC, ELB, box I: 696, Press release, [1927].
84. Troy, Couture Culture; Mary Lynn Stewart, “Copying and Copyrighting Haute
Couture: Democratizing Fashion, 1900–1930s,” French Historical Studies 28,
no. 1 (2005): 103–30.
85. Georgette Deschamps, “La Crise dans les Industries du Vêtement et de la Mode à
Paris pendant la période de 1930 à 1937,” (PhD thesis, Université de Paris, 1937).
86. Harold U. Faulkner, “Cheney, Ward,” Dictionary of American Biography
87. Finding aid for Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company Records, Finding
Aid, http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/findaids/Cheney/MSS19840026.html.
88. Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda (New York, 1927), 27.
89. Ibid., chap. 2.
90. LC, ELB, box 133, Letter draft from ELB to the members of the Velvet Fashion
Group, February 24, 1925, 1–2.
91. Ibid., 2.
92. LC, ELB, box 133, Letter draft from ELB to the members of the Velvet Fashion
Group, February 24, 1925, 3.
93. Bernays, Propaganda, chap. 2.
94. Ibid.
95. Ibid., 29.
96. LC, ELB, box 133, Cheney Brothers, 1923–1927, Ward Cheney of Cheney
Brothers, “Creating Styles in Fabrics” report, 25.
97. Ibid.
98. Bernays, Propaganda, 29.
99. Ibid. 30.
100. LC, ELB, scrapbook I 697, for release, September 1928.
101. “Fashion Forecasting Success, Says Parrish,” WWD, August 6, 1929, sec. 1, p. 5.
102. Advertisement, WWD, June 6, 1929, sec. 4, p. 7.
103. Bernays, Propaganda, 30.
104. Ibid., 36–37.
105. Ibid., 47.
106. Ibid., 66.
107. Ibid., 91.
108. Christel Carlotti and Gildas Minvielle, “Quelle est la spécificité de la mode en tant
que modèle économique original,” Mode de recherche 8 (2007): 17.
109. Stewart Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin (New York, 1996).

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