Pattern War

It sounded like a monster scoop when Ladies' Home Journal, kittenish, leggy, eagerly competitive these days under the editorship of Loring Ashley Schuler, announced that it had cornered the Paris pattern field. Magazines of massive circulation are dedicated to the serious business of dressing U. S. women in Paris clothes. Competing with Ladies' Home Journal (circulation 2,531,287) are Pictorial Review (2,459,750), McCall's (2,300,387), Delineator (1,511,573), Vogue (141,424), Harper's Bazaar (103,621).

What the Journal had done was to sign a contract with the Paris Pattern Co., Inc., by which the magazine has "exclusive right to describe and publish the latest models" supplied each month by 17 tip-top Parisian couturiers, including. Chanel, Lanvin, Poiret, Jane Regny, Lucile, Pre-met, Lenief, Louiseboulanger, Nicole Groult, Worth, Paquin, Jenny, Drecoll-Beer, Redfern, Doeuillet-Doucet, Philippe et Gaston, renee. Said the Ladies' Home Journal for May: "Our patterns are not inspired by Paris, they are not adapted from. Paris; they are actually designed, created and shown in the salons of the French haute couture," Once upon a time--Wartime--the Journal conducted a campaign for U. S. styles by U. S. designers for U. S. women. Nothing came of it, however, and now the Journal publishes page upon page of lovely creatures tagged with French names, letterpressed in lyric strain. In the face of the Journal's scoop, its competitors professed to be unmoved. They would go on getting their patterns as before, they said, chiefly through style scouts, sketchers and copyists in Paris and other places where the famed fair exhibit. As everyone knows, there is a, giant pattern business apart from, that of the magazines. Paris Pattern Co. has not only signed up the Ladies' Home Journal; it is out after contracts with the great department stores, has agreements with Manhattan's Lord & Taylor, Newark's Bamberger, Cleveland's Higbee, Philadelphia's Wanamaker, Washington's Woodward & Lathrop, Pittsburgh's, Home, Detroit's Crowley Milner, San Francisco's Emporium, Boston's White. Paris Patterns has also enlisted Wall Street, issued 30,000 shares of common stock.