FASHION: Irene, Inc.

Twenty of the nation's leading department stores last week leaped at the chance to make a big business out of a little woman. The little woman is Irene Gibbons, whose credit line ("Costume supervision by Irene") has made her name and work familiar to millions of cinemaddicts as executive designer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios.

The 20 stores, including such potent merchandisers as New York's Bergdorf Goodman, Chicago's Marshall Field and Dallas' Neiman-Marcus, put up $127,000 of the $277,000 capital for Irene, Inc., of which Irene owns 51% of the common stock. Irene promptly plumped down $75,-ooo for a 12,000-square-foot factory in Culver City (four minutes by car from her M-G-M studio headquarters), plus $11,000 more for remodeling. By October she expects to be turning out Irene-designed suits at $185 to $285, street and cocktail dresses at $125 to $265, and evening gowns at $250 to $450, to be sold exclusively by her 20-store sponsors.

Once the designer for Los Angeles' swank Bullock's-Wilshire store, Irene, who is married to Hollywood Writer Eliot Gibbons (brother of MGM's art director, Cedric Gibbons) went to M-G-M in 1942, where she heads a staff of more than 200. She will now cut down her M-G-M designing to eight or ten major pictures a year, delegate the rest to her assistants. MGM, anticipating profitable publicity tie-ins from the department stores, is entirely happy about the setup.