one of the most important points of the commercial city, a few meters from the great Empire State Building and from Fifth Avenue, which is reckoned the heart of fine commercial life in New York. It specializes in producing the garments the elegant lady wears within the walls of her home, such as robes de chambre, negligees, bed jackets, formal pajamas, beaded cashmere sweaters, covers for lounge chairs, etc... This house creates the fashions of these beautiful garments, produces them, and distributes them to the greatest and most splendid stores throughout the United States, Canada, and Latin America, and in a large part of Europe.
As for its owners and managers, they are three siblings of the Maalouf family: Nasib, Nasiba, and Najla Maalouf. Their late father left them this house, and they threw themselves into working in it with the drive and ambition of youth. They introduced into it new elements of artistry in taste, invention, and renewal, and set about cutting their difficult path among a plentiful number of competitors who were stronger in position, more abundant in money, and better equipped than they, until they excelled in this work, drew to themselves the eyes of the great American stores in New York and in the other great American cities, and became among those pointed out with the finger.
To demonstrate the success they have achieved, it is enough for me to mention that among the great New York stores that buy their goods, display them in their windows, and sell them at steep prices in the most famous shops are... and... etc... And speaking of these stores, it pleases me to recall that snowy day of Christmas week in New York on which a great joy flooded me, almost rivaling my joy in the holiday itself, when I stood astonished behind a great crowd of people gathered before the splendidly beautiful windows
of the Bonwit Teller store in Christmas week, and saw that the windows in their entirety had been given over to displaying the garments of the Perfect Negligee. I felt in that moment the intoxication of Lebanese pride, and I felt as if I would cry out to all the onlookers around me: these beautiful garments are the work of Lebanese!! That intoxication would come back to me, too, whenever I leafed through one of the great American fashion magazines and came upon a picture of a Perfect Negligee piece beside pictures of women's garments produced by the greatest artists of women's fashion in the world. And my esteem for the excellence
of the Maaloufs, and my pride in them as a Lebanese woman, reached its utmost limit when the famous magazine "Life," which does not ordinarily concern itself with fashions, once appeared with the front page of its cover occupied by the picture of a piece produced by the Perfect Negligee. For the reader to appreciate this matter at its true worth, she must know that the appearance of a picture on the front cover of Life magazine is regarded in America as tantamount to a momentous world event.
Worth mentioning too is that the Maaloufs, besides the great service they render Lebanon merely by occupying this lofty position