THE PIRATES' METHODS.

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 73, 23 September 1930, Page 13

THE PIRATES' METHODS.

In the French capital 250,000 persons are employed in the industry. The foreign trade alone of this industry brings about £5,000,000 yearly into the bank accounts of tho big houses. Leading dressmakers; it is stated, will each spend as much as from & 10,000 to £25,000 tt year in the production of their new models. They maintain staffs of designers who four times a year turn out 300 models. Of these perhaps 200 are good, CO very good, 80 remarkable, and the remaining 20 marvels of style and loveliness. It is the 20 that count, and it is for them mainly that the fashion war is waged.

Fashion, pirates resort-to all kinds of strategy to obtain drawings or patterns of these dresses. Handsome young men, generally with neat twoseater motor-ears .at their command, will make friends ■ with the midinettes who are working on the new models, and promise them love and money if they can bring patterns out of the workshops for just an hour. A pattern may be smuggled in a dressmaker's lunch parcel, and once the pirate gets hold of it he rushes it off to his studio and makes a rapid copy. Success is difficult because in the workrooms and at the doors there are men and women detectives always on the look out. This year, however, it is said that the pirates have been more successful than ever.