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Elizabeth Hawes (2) (1903–1971)

Forfatter af Fashion is Spinach

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Fødselsdato
1903-12-16
Dødsdag
1971-09-06
Køn
female
Nationalitet
USA
Fødested
Ridgewood, New Jersey, USA
Dødssted
New York, New York, USA
Bopæl
Paris, France
New York, New York, USA
Uddannelse
Vassar College
Erhverv
fashion designer
fashion writer
journalist
political activist
union organizer
author
Relationer
Losey, Joseph (husband)
Kort biografi
Elizabeth Hawes was born in Ridgewood, New Jersey. At age 10, she was making clothes and hats for her dolls, before beginning to sew her own clothes. Two years later, she started selling clothes to the young children of her mother's friends.

Like her mother, Elizabeth attended Vassar College, where she majored in economics and participated in college theatricals. In 1924, she got an unpaid apprenticeship in the Bergdorf Goodman workrooms in New York City to learn how expensive clothes were made to order. Before she left to return to college, the French imports came into the store, and she decided to go to France to learn more. After graduating in the spring of 1925, she arrived in Paris and went to work at a shop on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré that made high-quality but illegal copies of haute couture dresses. In 1926, she became a sketcher for a New York manufacturer of mass-produced clothing and a full-time fashion correspondent, writing a regular column that appeared in the New York Post, Detroit Free Press, Baltimore Sun, and other newspapers. This led to a regular column for the New Yorker under the pseudonym "Parisite," which ran for three years. She worked as a fashion buyer for Macy's, and then as a stylist for Lord & Taylor. The rest of her time in Paris was divided between socializing with her wealthy Vassar friends and engaging in the bohemian life; she befriended an artistic crowd that included the sculptors Alexander Calder and Isamo Noguchi. In 1928, she got a job with Nicole Groult, sister of Paul Poiret. There she developed her method of design based upon the technique of draping on a wooden mannequin. She
returned to New York in 1928 and joined up with Rosemary Harden, the cousin of a friend, to open a shop called Hawes-Harden that sold only its own designs and made clothes to order. In 1930, Harden sold her share of the company to Hawes, who kept the business going during the Great Depression. In 1931, she presented her collection in Paris, which won her a great deal of media attention. Along with Annette Simpson and Edith Reuss, Hawes is credited with creating an "American style." She was an advocate of trousers for women and followed her own advice.
Eventually, she moved into making ready-to-wear clothes. In 1937, she married director Joseph Losey, with whom she had a son. The following year, she published Fashion Is Spinach, an autobiography and exposé of the fashion industry. After that, she published Men Can Take It (1939) and closed her clothing business. She wrote a column for PM, a left-learning daily newspaper.

In 1942, during World War II, she got a night job at an airplane factory to personally experience the life of women machine operators. She used her experiences as the basis for a 1943 book called Why Women Cry or, Wenches with Wrenches. After the war, Hawes worked for a time as a union organizer for the United Auto Workers focusing on women. She wrote Hurry Up Please It's Time (1946), describing sexual and racial discrimination in the union movement. In 1950, she moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands and worked as a freelance writer and designer for Priscilla of Boston. Hawes settled in Southern California in the early 1950s, where she experimented with the production of knitwear decorated with abstract patterns.

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A fascinating insight into the history of fashion and the behind the catwalk maschinations.
This digital copy was given to me by the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest, unbiased review
 
Markeret
Welsh_eileen2 | 1 anden anmeldelse | Jan 23, 2016 |
So enjoyable! I loved her breezy writing style and the glimpse into the fashion business of the 20s and 30s. If you want to basically die of envy, please immediately google image search ELIZABETH HAWES DESIGNER, oh my god those dresses were amazing and would be completely in style today.
LOVE HER.

Here's a taste of how this book is so charming:

"I got Miss Dodge, my old classmate and the warden of Vassar, to collect a group of what she considered the best sweater girls on the campus to consider the matter of something new in sweaters with me. I traveled to Poughkeepsie to consult with them. They were a very attractive set of girls. As I looked them over, I perceived that they had all gotten themselves up in honor of the occasion.

One had on a white turtle-necked sweater. Another wore a red sweater with a small round neck. A third had on a crew-necked Brooks model. And the fourth and the fifth and the sixth had on different colors of the same models.
How do you like your sweaters?" I asked.

"We love them," they responded all at once.

"Can you think of any improvements that could be made?" I inquired.

'No" they asserted firmly.

I tried for an hour and a half to make them tell me something they would like to have in the way of a sweater, something new, something different. There wasn't a thing they wanted. They wore sweaters nine-tenths of the time and they were perfectly satisfied.

They would only concede that possibly there might be other and more exciting colors from time to time. I left them. I had discovered exactly what I feared. Sweaters were quite satisfactory."

PS you can download this as a free ebook! http://archive.org/details/fashionisspinach00hawerich
… (mere)
 
Markeret
JenneB | 1 anden anmeldelse | Apr 2, 2013 |

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Statistikker

Værker
6
Medlemmer
75
Popularitet
#235,804
Vurdering
½ 3.3
Anmeldelser
2
ISBN
13

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