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Mothers stock up on steam irons and starch, on lunch meats and cookies, and wax paper and aluminum foil to wrap them in. With schoolchildren's summer freedom restricted, toothpaste sales undergo a sudden spurt. Perhaps because the family once more sits together around the breakfast table, where mom can systematically put a pill by each plate, vitamin sales rise dramatically. And as children again come into close association with each other at school, and colds and contagious diseases rise, druggists also do a booming business in antibiotics, cold remedies, prescriptions and allergy pills.
Then there is, of course, the purchase of school clothes and supplies—one of the biggest splurges of the merchandising year.
For women, the disappearance of the bathing suit only serves to make the beauty business suddenly important: there are roughened elbows to be smoothed, stringy hair to be nourished, tans to be pampered right up until the first snow.
Lipstick shades darken and perfumes change from light mists and colognes to heavier, more "sophisticated" scents. "In August it's Bluegrass," says an Elizabeth Arden executive; "then suddenly it's September and it's Memoire Chérie. Like overnight!" Pipe Time. Department stores do the major part of their business during the last months of the year—right across the boards—but clothing usually leads the way. Back from vacation or their summer resorts, women are ready to spend on the new fall fashions with their usual abandon. Hats and furs come back, edging off the counters the waning summer sales.
Men tend to wait for cold weather before buying heavier clothes, and consider it illogical that women should suddenly eschew white after Labor Day (especially in the Midwest, where white accessories are selling at fire-sale rates).
But men, on the other hand, are often equally arbitrary about the season. Tobacconists—particularly those in college towns—note a considerable rise in the sale of pipes and pipe tobacco during the autumn months. Sports change in a predictable pattern. "We have beautiful autumns in Kansas City," says Golf Pro Darrell Wilson. "It's a surprise to me that fellows who play all summer on Thursday afternoons and weekends, no matter how hot it gets, will put away their clubs after their Labor Day round and not get them out again until Decoration Day." If golfers tend to fade, the return in force of the city hotelkeeper's best friend —the traveling salesman—is eagerly anticipated and heartily welcomed. Says the Sheraton Hotels' Phil Shea: "Labor Day marks the beginning of the prime conventions and the pickup in commercial traveling. As far as we're concerned, it's the beginning of the good season." To greet the good season, Manhattan's Four Seasons restaurant has under way perhaps one of the most elaborate preparations for fall (the restaurant changes its decor and ample indoor foliage four times a year to match the change of season). Since nature is not quite ready to do the job, the Four Seasons now has a small grove of maple trees under refrigeration at a New Jersey nursery to bring them to just the right shade of autumn red.