Fashion Clinic

If you happened to walk down the west side of Fifth Avenue, between 42nd and 40th streets, Manhattan, on almost any summer day of recent years likely as not you were the object of a penetrating glance from a young woman standing on the steps of the New York Public Library. Having glanced, she probably made a mark in the notebook she held in her hand. She may have noted the color of your stockings, the cut of your suit, the length of your skirt, the shape of your hat. You had become a statistic.

Last week, the results of many a year of statistic-gathering were told 60 students at the fashion clinic of the Amos Parrish Co. in the Savoy Plaza Hotel, Manhattan. Among the 60 were managers of fashionable shops, buyers, stylists, representatives of a mail order house (Montgomery, Ward & Co.), reporters (The Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News). Each wanted to penetrate the mystery of fashion. Each had paid $200 for the opportunity.

To them, adroitly, experts of Amos

Parrish & Co.* revealed their discoveries, as follows:

Fashions move in cycles, can be predicted.

Fashions are of two types, experimental and accepted. Experimental fashions, observable at the opera and expensive restaurants, are dangerous for the prudent shopper. Accepted fashions show themselves on the street, in good but inexpensive restaurants.

The day of the old buyer is passing, that of the stylist beginning. But not all expensive stores are abreast of the merchandizing times. Leaders among fashion-conscious shops are Macy's (Manhattan department store), Woolworth's (5-and-10 cent chain stores).

Not all fashions have to do with clothes. Clear and significant are present-day fashions in:

Beards. It is fashionable to be cleanshaven.

Jewelry. Men wear little jewelry, rarely display stickpins, rings.

Watches. Thin, with gold or platinum dials.

* Among them: Dr. Paul Henry Nystrom, professor of marketing at Columbia University, foremost fashion authority; Miss Lulu Fellows, practical fashion analyst.