The Popular Strike

Every August, Parisian haute couture stages a style show dedicated to extolling the wares of Schiaparelli, Fath and Dior, and extracting the dollars of Saks, Filene's and Neiman-Marcus. This year, however, the show almost flopped before it started.

American buyers last week thronged thirstily around the bars at the Ritz and Crillon, gossiped knowingly of new, narrowed skirts, shorter day dresses and a new emphasis on black, green and yellow. Then, five days before the show, 12,000 of Paris' 20,000 midinettes* laid down their needles and flounced out on what was probably France's most popular strike of the year.

The midinettes, many of whom were members of the Communist-run General Confederation of Labor, were also supported by the Roman Catholic French Confederation of Christian Workers. They were striking for a raise of 15 francs (4 1/2-c-) an hour. At an indignation meeting in the Bourse du Travail, a dark-haired Lanvin girl excitedly waved her pay envelope, showing 6,138 francs (about $18) for two weeks' work, and yelled: "I've got to support my mother with that!" Other girls showed mimeographed letters sent by their bosses warning them to return--or else. In front of one shop, a bunch of pickets gleefully embraced amused gendarmes, cheerfully exchanged au revoirs and `a bientots as the gendarmes left their posts for lunch.

Behind the facades of the great houses of fashion, meanwhile, there was much feverish activity. Mannequins, salesgirls and designers were rushed to the sewing tables to get the dresses ready in time. Curly-haired Jacques Fath, stripped to the waist, sat in a room stacked with designs and lengths of expensive material. "The girls are the first to suffer if they stay away," said he. "They'll be back."

After three days, many of them were. Both sides had yielded a little; wage talks were begun. A measure of quiet returned to the frantic halls of the haute couture.

* Midinette (from dinette: a light meal) was originally a generic term for Parisian shopgirls. Over the years, however, its use has become more & more restricted to the seamstresses.

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