of his own and a school of his own to which he belongs, so each of the famous couturiers has his own style: the designs of Dior, for instance, astonish us with their daring, inventiveness, and extrem-ism; Balmain answers this with moderation and deliberation; and Leconte stands alone in creating gowns inspired by the lines of the Indian sari...

And just as each salon has its own style of creation, so each has its own troupe of models (mannequins): there are the tall ones, like the troupe of Germaine Leconte, and the short ones, like the troupe of Dessès; and each troupe has a particular manner of moving during the show — from steps that dart along with a nervous skittishness, to a swaying, haughty, bewitching gait, to a swiftness of stride like the flash of lightning...

Yet all are agreed, more or less, on the following order: first the suits are shown, then the simple day dresses and the ordinary coats, moving on to the cocktail dresses with their gaiety, then the glittering evening gowns with their splendor; and the show usually ends with the bridal gown...

Every gown has its name and its number, announced as the model enters the hall of the salon. These names have a special magic, for they hint at the artist's emotion as he created the gown, and perhaps they disclose the distant past from which he drew his inspiration. Here are examples of these names:

Pompadour, Étourderie, Coquette, Trianon, Versailles

Among the most charming things I have seen in this line was a showing by Fath in which he bestowed upon his collection of gowns the names of famous writers and poets, living and dead, from Musset to Claudel and from Hugo to Sartre — as if, hard pressed to find new names for his fertile invention, he dipped into France's literary heritage and joined it to his artistic heritage.

Every show has a focal point around which it turns, and a basic theme from which branch many offshoots closely bound to it. Just as a piece of music has a basic melody to which all the subsidiary melodies return, so every fashion show in these salons is a splendid work of art, composed in an orderly way, bespeaking the logical French mind and the refinement of feeling in the being of its creator.

Among the characteristics of this modern art is the constant change of lines, colors, and directions. Scarcely does one season pass over the latest gown the modern lady has worn before we feel that she has fallen behind the caravan of the new fashions; she is forever in a continual race with the mode. For modern civilization, with its speed of communications, its modern ways of living, and its ceaseless movement, individual and collective, has played its part in woman's dress: whereas in the Middle Ages and before, fashions took tens of years to travel and to change, today we can carry them

in a few hours on the "magic carpet," or through the "mirror of half the world."

If we glance at the evolution of fashion since 1946, the day Dior created the New Look, we find that women's fashion has changed four or five times in the last ten years: from the "New Look" to the shortening of the dress, to the "string bean" line (haricot vert), to the "H" line, to the "Princesse" line, to the "A" line, etc.

We may say that Dior is the leader of the movement of creation; his fame is worldwide, and he is, with-out rival, the dictator of women's dress in the world... Certain circles of dressmakers and clients may at times rise against him and refuse to follow his extreme lines, but in the end they bow to the power of his magic wand...

And despite this rapid change that we see in modern fashion, the art of couture in Paris has qualities that set it apart from all the rest of the world's production in this line: the hidden elegance that is but glimpsed; the deliberation in the blending of colors; and that classical touch in its aiming at per-fect beauty — in the words of the French themselves, "that hidden something by which French dress-making is distinguished." All these are features of this long-rooted art in which France has stood alone through the generations...