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She puts in a concentrated working day. Usually she is in her salon by 10 and works straight through, often without lunch, until 6. Her corner office is tiny (12 ft. by 15 ft.). Her desk has a bargain-basement clutter of sketches, snapshots and a teacup or two. For her big-spending customers, such as Mrs. E. F. Hutton, Mrs. Pierre du Pont and Mrs. James Van Alen, Sophie usually pops out of her office and plays salesgirl herself. She is quite a salesgirl, and can usually manage to charm the customers into wearing what she thinks they should. Before an adamantine customer who knows exactly what she wants, regardless, Sophie gracefully gives in. "I used to tell everyone when something wasn't becoming to them," she says. "Then they went right out to other shops and bought something like it anyway. Now I only tell it to those who'll take my advice."
Nor does Sophie worry about that bugaboo of smart shops—selling the same $500 dress to two women and having them both wear it to the same party. She tells her regular customers what their friends have bought. But occasional customers have to take their chances.
For designing, selling and overseeing the 300 fitters, seamstresses, etc. in her workshop, Sophie is paid $34,000 a year by her boss, who is also her husband-Adam Gimbel, president of Saks and cousin of Bernard Gimbel, president of the parent company, Gimbel Brothers, Inc.
Model at Work. Sophie and Adam live with her son, Jay Rossbach (by Sophie's first marriage), in a modernized four-story house on Manhattan's East 64th Street. (Their twin beds have "Sophie" and "Adam" cosily embroidered on the pillowslips.) Sophie's hobbies are collecting china dogs and raising tulips and rhododendrons in the small garden in the rear. They also lease a small, seven-room country house near Red Bank, N.J.
As boss of Saks, and as a genial extravert who likes to air his opinions, Adam is not above telling Sophie how she ought to run her fashion business. Sophie usually ends such discussions: "Now, Adam, dear, we've been all over that before. You know how familiar I am with the subject, so let's not discuss it again."
Although Sophie works hard, she has enough time for an active social life and usually is not in bed before 1 a.m. Even at parties she is really working at modeling her own clothes. She seldom comes home from a party without a handful of orders for whatever she had on.