WOMEN'S WEAR AND THE WOMEN.
How Conditions Can Be Improved for the Trades and the Workers, and the Women Wearers Themselves.
All of the women's wear industries are dependent upon the wishes of women. When they can be learned in advance, the manufacturers are immensely helped. When the new season approaches and orders are late, the manufacturers are crowded, and those who have before needed work are now done to death.
How have the manufacturers tried to adjust it? They have decided that if all the women would dress alike in the street, or nearly so, in their ready-made suits and coats, then the manufacturers could get at their work early, give the factories a rational time to get up stock, and all would be fine.
When the manufacturers have met and decided that women had better use this cloth and that color and coats of such a length, then all the other people say, "What of it?" The women who buy the best ready-made garments don't even know what manufacturers do. And this is the lock -- in which to try a key.
The women don't know. Let's tell them. Women today are restless in the unsettled state of woman's status as an individual. Every town in the United States is full of women having unused potential energy. They really want to help the world's struggles to a rational settlement, but they haven't yet got their action.
Could a situation be better framed if made to order, for a test? WOMEN'S WEAR opens this column for communications from manufacturers. We want to receive definite statements giving information upon the economic side of this problem. We want statements about the serious suffering in the garment making industries of America, resulting from the irregular and long deferred placing of orders by women. The manufacturers shall have the floor first.
The women shall answer, if they will, and if they are in earnest, as we believe they are, in wanting to take a helpful part and an administrative part in the great problems of the day. Later on, when the situation has been clearly outlined, perhaps the women will cooperate with department stores and enable them to say that their lists for orders will be closed upon a certain definite day twice a year, well in advance of the season.
We feel sure that it is information, not compulsion, that is needed to secure loyal cooperation from our women of today. And, moreover, an attempt at compulsion in styles or anything else connected with the manufacturing of women's garments will result in the death of ready-to-wear garments. What then?
Friday's WOMEN'S WEAR will take this subject up again; also Friday's Retailer's WEEKLY REVIEW, which is for sale.
WOMEN'S WEAR
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