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Looking Backward. As Adam's wife, Sophie's abilities as a designer have not always been above suspicion in the skeptical dress industry. Her rivals try to belittle her by saying: "After all, she's the boss's wife." But no one who knows Adam really believes that that's the answer. Sophie has her job because she has earned it. And in the backbiting world of fashion she is quite able to take care of herself. As Sophie says, in her most ladylike tones: "After all, my dear, Hattie Carnegie isn't really a designer. She's a saleswoman." (Catty-cornered across the way, Hattie parries this knife-thrust acidly: "I wouldn't call Sophie a competitor because I don't even think twice about her.") Sophie makes no bones about the fact that she is no drawing-board designer, that she couldn't draw a curve to save her neck. If it comes to that, most of the other top designers are no better with a pencil than Sophie. "But," as she says, "they won't admit it. We all design in just about the same way."
Sophie designs with the help of a sketcher and tall, bald Stewart Erlkin, who is a good enough designer to do Sophie's sophisticated models with little help from her. She also buys sketches from outsiders, changing them to suit her taste. And, like all other designers, she constantly combs over the styles of the last 5,000 years. One of her most fertile hunting grounds is the Brooklyn Museum, which she likes because it lets her take costumes back to her shop for copying. This year it supplied the inspiration for a woman's suit jacket copied from a man's hunting coat, and 15 dresses and a blouse with a filmy, peekaboo look, copied from a 75-year-old camisole. Sophie is well aware of the limitations of her art, and that styles run in amazingly regular cycles.* The trick is timing: to pick the right idea out of the past at the right time in the present. (This year's much touted "domino coat," which makes a woman look as if she were peering out of a tent, is nothing but the pyramid coat of 1866.)
Expensive Bargains. Sophie designs by telling one of her $125-a-week modelmakers exactly what she wants. To save money, a "mockup" of the dress is usually made first, in cheap muslin. When this is satisfactory, the muslin serves as a pattern. Compared to her costs, Sophie's selling prices of $255 to $1,500 are comparatively modest. Example: in her most expensive evening dress, the ermine trim alone cost $500, the chiffon another $76, overhead and workmanship, $294. With the markup of 42%, the selling price was $1,500.
On her cheapest suits—which sell for $365—Sophie laments that she loses money, making them only as a courtesy to customers. On the other hand, her clothes seldom wear out or go out of style quickly. Recently, while she was visiting the Darryl Zanucks in Hollywood, a party was given for Sophie. Mrs. Zanuck wore an eight-year-old Sophie dress.