Los Angeles herald., 1909-11-05

~ association. now holding It's
- 60 annual convention IN New
IM k3H York. is an organization con-
"a - cerned more with the imam
lesHz9A cial side of the millinery pus-
mess than with the artistic. The NIL
linerv business In the United States is
a barometer which registers the slight
e7t variation in the prosperity OF the
country. Americans are at once the
most prosperous and the most extraVa-
CANT people in the world, and both
qualities are shown in the fact that
the American millinery bill Is larger
than that of all the rest of the world
combined. Paris makes the styles,
Paris makes the prices and Paris
makes the hats, but it is not alone for
the Parisienne. OF course there are
many smartly dressed women in Paris
probably more than In any other city,
but even in that vortex of the whlrl-
pool of fashion 1t is only the few who
have either the desire or the money to
follow the vagaries OF the milliners.
In the United States, on the other
hand, there is not O village, however
remote, to which the fashion journals
do not penetrate and in which the fem
mime heart is not enslaved to it's own
conception of what is the smartest and
the latest thing in hats. In fact II
Paris is the alpha of millinery, then is
Podunk the omega, for verify 1t Is in
the backwoods villages that styles In
hats reach the extreme of faddishness.
The village belle and the farmers
daughter of La Belle France go
through their thrifty youth with never
a thought of apeing the hats of the
grand ladies' of Paris. The American
village belle and farmers daughter are
subscribers to the smartest fashion
magazines, and their hats must be
| .ilt in exact imitation of the newest
pictures in the gayest of fashion
plates. And all of this means more
money for the milliners. Prices of
women's hats run a long scale upward
from the country store, Where 80 nat
is considered q creation" up to the
smart city shop, where it is absolute
ly impossible to find anything that
looks like hat for less than $25. and
where even the SIS customer must quail
before the lifted eyebrows and up
turned nose of the saleslady.
Every spring and fall the women of
the United States who buy cheap hats
exhibit more courage than ever has
been exhibited by any army on any
battlefield in the history of warfare
If 1t is humillating not to buy the high
est priced hat in the shop, 1t is dis
graceful to buy the cheapest one. II is
not to be supposed for an instant that
milliners are unaware of this condition
of affairs They know that many wom-
en- are brave enough to haggle over the
price and to actually buy cheap hat
but they also know that there are thou
sands who are frightened into paying
the greater price. They also know,
learned as they are in the ways Of
woman nature, that there are thou
sands and thousands of women who
are perfectly willing TO buy ten dollar
hat IL only Il so be that they are re-
uuired to pay twenty dollars for that
same hat. Milliners, in their confiden-
tial moments, will confess that they are
able to recognize such women at sight,
and that when one comes into the shop
all prices are doubled automatically
Large shops and department stores
put the prices on the hats in plain fig
ures. thereby preventing the sliding
scale from operating. However, there
lie many a woman who goes into the
large shop and buys hat on the virtue
of the plainly marked price tag who Is
very much delighted If none of her
friends. discovers where she got that
hat One of the strangest features OF
this peculiar business Is that while no
mere man may hope to understand the
XaRaFleS
guess as to the probable cost of hat.
yet II is the man milliner who is at the
bottom of the whole thing. The vast
majority of the working milliners, those
who make and trim the hats, are wom-
en-. But the designers, the merchants
and the jobbers are men, and 1t Is they
who direct the semi-annual assault Of
the milliners upon the bank balances of
the nation.
In no other branch Of ordinary mer-
camille business are profits so great as
In women's hats. However the milliner
is able to set up a very forceful argu-
ment in defense of his 500 per cent
profit. In the first place the hats Of
one season are as useless six months
later as the birds nest of yesteryear
In theory they are absolutely dead
stock. AS a matter OF fact, however,
very few trimmed hats are carried for
ward from one season to another, the
manufacturing end of the business be-
ing in such close relation with the SELL
ing agencies, and shrewd observers
have discovered that radical changes in
the styles of hat shapes never take
place when the wholesale houses arc
carrying a surplus stock of last sea-