Swank as Usual

Not even the strikes which tied up France's greatest automobile plants (TIME, June 8, et seq.), not even a new Socialist Premier and a new Chamber of

Deputies in which for the first time Communists hold 72 seats, stopped the world's swankest builders of custom bodies from dressing up the world's most appetizing poules de luxe in the latest Paris gowns and starting off this summer's season at

French resorts with the usual concours d'elegance, de confort et de technique de la carrosserie.

Specifically the great aircraft engine makers, Hispano-Suiza, sent famed Sacha Guitry's good friend, Mlle Claude May, to win a Grand Prix d'Honneur in starched organdie with peplum jacket and one of their dazzling cars. More conservative, the Delage Company sent Mme Paul Cartier, daughter of a onetime Imperial Russian oil tycoon and wife of a small Geneva banker, to be "crowned" La Laureate.

As usual at Cannes, Biarritz, Deauville and Dinard this year the same cars and the same women will barnstorm through weeks of automotive elegance. At each resort there is something called a "First Prize" which is given to a more or less standard U. S. car in the low or medium price class, after the real first and second prizes (the prix d'elegance and the prix d'honneur) have been won by cars in the $20,000 class.

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