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Profit or Loss? As to whether the salon makes a profit, there is some disagreement. Together with the new Los Angeles salon, it will gross about $1,000,000 this year, said Sophie, and "make plenty of money." But in the incredibly expensive business of custom-made women's clothes, a profit is an elusive thing. Adam Gimbel won't say whether the salon will make one. However, Saks will net some $900,000 on Sophie Originals. Though Adam occasionally winces at Sophie's extravagant way of using $40-a-yard material (she keeps nearly $1,000,000 in materials on hand), he is exceedingly happy to take his salon profit in prestige for Saks. Though Saks carries the clothes of 27 other American designers, it no longer buys any Paris models. "If they want Paris clothes, they'll have to go somewhere else," says Sophie firmly. "But in the last two years, few of my customers have wanted anything from Paris."
New for Old. But other U.S. designers are not so sure. Manhattan's Hattie Carnegie, who claims to have started the hip-padding "before anyone heard of Dior," was featuring Paris dresses last week, and busily pinching in waists, lowering hems. So was Manhattan's Henri Bendel, who was showing ankle-length skirts and padded hips. Nettie Rosenstein, the top designer of the mass-producing Seventh Avenue factories, was going in for padding and long skirts. Seventh Avenue's Harriet Harra went even further with a "wraparound" cocktail suit which would have made an Egyptian mummy feel at home. But Russian-born, beautiful Valentina (Mme. George Schlee) was almost as conservative as Sophie. Her hems were down slightly and her décolletage was down a lot. Said Valentina: "The bozoom ees half-exposed, jost enoff to cover the—you know." Many a small-fry designer was trying so desperately to get everything Parisian into one dress that some models looked like an anthology of style.
To make matters warmer for those trying to take Paris or leave it alone, Christian Dior hustled to the U.S. last week to accept an award from Dallas' Neiman-Marcus Co. for his "outstanding service" to the clothing industry. For the counter-revolutionists he had a well-bred sneer. "The women who are loudest for short skirts will soon be wearing the longest dresses. I know very well the women. The short skirt was never a good fashion— very vulgar. The American women will accept the new fashions. You can never stop the fashions."
No one was really trying to stop them. Despite the outcries, women were already showing enough enthusiasm for the New Look to pull the dress industry out of its slump and set it humming. Hems of old dresses were being let down with such speed that many a town ran out of seam tape. Said Harper's Bazaar airily: "Clear your closet and get your clothes into the hands of those who can use them [in Europe]." But the dresses most likely to be sought would probably be closer to Sophie Gimbel's ideas than to Dior's.