SALLY VICTOR

THE shape of things to come in Easter bonnets--and most other hats--is largely determined by a short, pert, alert woman who is one of the U.S.'s most successful businesswomen. Sally Victor, 54, is not.only the biggest fashion hatmaker (more than $500,000 a year) in the multimillion-dollar millinery business (1958 sales: $300 million), but she is a trend setter (along with such designers as Mr. John and Lilly Dache), the only milliner to win the Coty award, fashion world "Oscar." Her $55-to-$90 creations (up to $1,000 with fur or jewelry) soon reappear in pirated cheaper models; many a U.S. housewife will wear a Sally Victor design this Easter without knowing it. But her custom hats go first to such luminaries as Queen Elizabeth II, Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Furness, Hollywood's Judy Garland and the Gabors. This week Designer Victor went to Washington with Easter headgear for Longtime Customer Mamie Eisenhower, who wore a Sally Victor hat to the President's first inauguration. So did Mrs. Truman.

The hat industry, long in a slump, is now on the way back. From a total of $400 million in the '20s, hat sales dropped to a low of $250 million in 1953. Part of the trouble was a shift in fashion; the longtime dictum that every woman had to wear a hat to be well dressed almost died in the flight to the suburbs and the new, casual living. But fault also lay with the hatmakers; hats became too silly even for women to wear. Says Designer Victor: "We forgot one thing--to make the hats pretty. All you have to do is show a woman that she looks prettier with a hat on than off, and money doesn't mean a thing." As hats became pretty again (Designer Victor scored with her flowered hats), sales rose, are expected this year to reach a postwar high.

Why are hats so high priced? Top hat workers get high wages ($4.50 an hour) and spend an average of six hours' work on a Victor hat. The markup is high (100% to make up for the seasonal nature of hats, greater sales risk and packing costs).

When designing, Sally Victor makes no sketches, works directly with hat bodies and materials. She sometimes takes a week to create a single hat, but under pressure can design as many as 30 hats in a day. For the 2,000 she turns out a year, she gets ideas from everywhere. She got her 1940 "Flemish sailor" hat. which is still widely copied, from the tight-fitting, brimmed hat in a 15th century painting by Roger van der Weyden. She designed a line of successful "chessmen" hats after seeing a show of old chessmen at New York's Metropolitan Museum. She has derived yellow bonnets from Van Gogh, beige pillboxes set with seashells from Gauguin, bright-colored squares from Painter Mondrian.

Born Sally Josephs in Scranton, Pa., she was the daughter of an inventor and one of six sisters who were taught to "sew, and sew well." She began designing her own hats and clothes at 14, went to Paris at 17 to study painting for two years. When she returned to Manhattan she went to work for Macy's, was hired away by L. Bamberger & Co. She married Hat Manufacturer Sergiu F. Victor in 1927, quit Bamberger's in 1929 to have a baby (now Manhattan Lawyer Richard M. Victor), then went to work designing hats for her husband. In 1934 her husband gave her $10,000 to set up her own shop. "I went through that $10,000 in a month," she says, '-'but it was a lovely shop." Since Lord & Taylor's had been featuring the Sally Victor hats, customers flocked to her shop. Within five years husband Sergiu closed his own operation and joined his wife. The Victors set up a subsidiary, "Sally V," to bring moderate-priced ($15 to $35) hats to young girls because "too many of them looked like Czechoslovakian farm women." "Sally V" now accounts for 50% of the business.

Designer Victor does not think a woman needs a hat for each season or each outfit. "A good hat can be worn any time," she says. "You can wear a black velvet hat in June or a white hat in November if the hat looks well."

As for husbands, they should remember that their wives are hatting themselves for compliments. "Criticizing a hat," she says, "is a husband's psychological outlet. It's a way he has for letting off steam. What he feels about his wife he says about her hat. If a girl's husband criticizes her new hat, she shouldn't blame the designer. She should consult a lawyer."

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