Monday, Feb. 10, 1958

Belts, Buckles & Bows

With svelte elegance. Paris fashion designers last week beckoned in the press to see the haute couture creations that this year will tell the American woman how to look like a lampshade (see BUSINESS). Day after day, model after model slinked before scribbling newshens, who busily sighted the bearings of each belt, buckle and bow. After one tense model marathon, the New York Herald Tribune's capable Eugenia Sheppard (TIME, Aug. 12) confessed: "I was a wreck by the end of the show, and to tell the truth, my notes are a mess."

Amid such feminine confusion confidently strode the most influential fashion reporter in Paris: lanky, dimpled Princetonian John Fairchild. 30. European director of his family's Fairchild Publications, Inc. Fairchild had scored a beat on the openings by predicting fortnight ago in his company's fashion-conscious Women's Wear Daily that "the 1958 woman will wear shorter skirts than last season . . . The chemise [sack] is here to stay, but with new slim or wider versions."

A Red Envelope. If anyone in Paris knew as much about the showings as Fairchild, it was the American business envoys from the garment industry. Reason: every morning at 8 a messenger delivered to their hotel rooms a big red envelope stuffed with the cables Fairchild and his crew of seven reporters had filed to Women's Wear Daily the previous evening. Said Manufacturer Joseph Frumkes of Monarch Garment Corp.: "Even when I'm in Paris, I have to read Women's Wear to find out what's going on here."

Because of such dogged reporting and special services, Women's Wear Daily (10-c- an issue, $12 a year; circ. 47,215) has long been required reading for those who design, make or sell clothes for the American woman. Macy's alone takes 112 subscriptions. So influential is Women's Wear that a four-line story on a back page about a dress that is selling well will bring dozens of inquiring phone calls from retailers around the country. Women's Wear does its level best to wield its power impersonally, never disparages any style, and like the other Fairchild publications runs no editorials. The result is a paper that is as plain as gingham and just as reliable.

The Fairchild publications have felt at home in gingham ever since Edmund W. Fairchild bought a piece of a Chicago clothing trade paper in 1890. "Our Salvation Depends Upon Our Printing the News," is the admonishing slogan that hangs from the ceilings of Fairchild's twelve-story home office building just off lower Fifth Avenue. Over the years Edmund and his brother Louis founded five flourishing trade publications: Women's Wear Daily, Daily News Record (men's clothing industry; circ. 21,687), Men's Wear (a semimonthly for retailers; circ. 21,091), Home Furnishings Daily (circ. 40,302) and Footwear News (a weekly; circ. 18,472).

A Black Record. Edmund died in 1949 and Louis in 1950. The company is now in the hands of Edmund's son Louis, president (and the father of the Paris bureau's John), and Louis' son Edgar, vice president. Modest and shy as their fathers, Louis, 56. and Edgar, 52, have added two more weeklies to their family's tidy empire: Supermarket News (49,499) and Electronic News (21,633). All but Electronic News, founded last year, are in the black.

To service these seven, Fairchild annually spends $4,000,000 on a network of 25 American and seven foreign news bureaus, plus 405 correspondents and stringers, staffs everything that touches on the business world, from presidential press conferences to bankruptcy proceedings at every U.S. District Court. This thoroughness pays off. When Queen Elizabeth came to the U.S. last year. Women's Wear Daily reported her wardrobe so thoroughly that the editors were soon getting phone calls from harried royal press officers anxious to get the facts straight on just what their charge was wearing.

With such prestige and resources, the Fairchild brothers are already looking around for new trades to report on by paper or magazine. Says Edgar: "We've got room for about two more publications in our present quarters."

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