Business: Haute Couture

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Mainbocher ("Main" to his friends). was born in Chicago and edited Paris Vogue. Five years ago he resigned to go into business for himself, reputedly with the backing of Mrs. Gilbert Miller (daughter of Broker J. S. Bache), Elsie de Wolfe and the Comtesse de Vallambrosa. Mainbocher, youngest of the currently prominent houses, turns out chic and tasteful gowns in a chic and severe salon on Avenue George V.

Schiaparelli. "Of course we don't want pants," cried Elsa Schiaparelli in a speech before Manhattan's Fashion Group last year. "Men are already ugly enough in them without having women wear them." But Mme Schiaparelli gave women practically everything else, including dresses made of cellophane and rubber, collars of china, gadgets designed from harness. One of her best textile designs grew out of some plaster and netting she picked up in a rubbish pile. In her crusade for sharp, dramatic line ("skyscraper silhouet") Mme Schiaparelli persecutes the button with morbid zeal, has substituted all manner of gadgets in place of it, including metal coat fasteners in the shape of dollar signs.

Madder and more original than most of her contemporaries, Mme Schiaparelli is the one to whom the word "genius" is applied most often. Even to her intimate friends she remains an enigma. Her great-great-grandmother was an Egyptian. Her Italian father was dean of the University of Rome, a professor of oriental lore, an authority on Sanskrit and old coins. Her uncle, Astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. discovered the canals on Mars. Elsa Schiaparelli was born in Rome, educated in Switzerland and England where she married a Polish gentleman and moved to New York. There she lived on 9th Street, worked for the cinema in New Jersey, did translations for importing houses, had a baby. After five years of marriage she left her husband, fled to Paris.

One day in 1925 she designed a black & white sweater for herself. Her friends liked the smart melancholy of black in sportswear, urged her to take an attic in the rue de la Paix and set up as a designer. She did, in 1927. Two years later she moved down two flights. By 1932 her 400 employes were turning out between 7,000 and 8,000 garments a year and Mme Schiaparelli, with no previous experience and only five years' work, was the most discussed fashion-maker in Paris.

Midinettes and Vendeuses consider it a privilege to work in her house, though she is often autocratic, impatient and hasty. She arrives promptly at 10 o'clock, opens and answers every letter herself, signs every check. She can design gowns with pencil and shears but more often puts them together in her head while driving in a motorcar. At her opening last week, clad in a last season's black crepe dress, she tied each scarf and fastened each belt on the mannequins before they left the cabine. Then she hastily escaped to her studio.