High, Wide & Texan

In the free-wheeling stagecoach days of the 1850s, Dallas won fame as a lively center of the buffalo-hide trade. But last week, the city played host to 5,000 department-store and specialty-shop buyers who were too busy to bother with Dallas' frontier past. They came to see the up-to the-minute fall styles of the city's bustling fashion industry, eighth largest in the U.S

In the Hotel Adolphus showrooms and on the display racks of busy shops along Commerce and Poydras Streets, 859 manufacturers showed off their styles, designed with the splash and color which have made Texas clothes a big-selling favorite of 20,000 retail stores in 3,500 cities and towns all over the U.S. To service these far-flung outlets, Dallas manufacturers have taken to air freight; last year Texas' own Slick Airways flew out 349,000 pounds of Dallas fashions, which have even invaded Manhattan.

Lusty Infant. Such high-flying merchandising methods are commonplace in Dallas' fast-growing fashion trade. The industry got its big start in the mid-1930s, when the wave of U.S. unionization sent many a small garmentmaker seeking refuge in open-shop Dallas; soon it had an $18-million-a-year volume. It concentrated on sport clothes and other casual wear in big demand in mild-weathered outdoor-loving Texas. With World War II, the Dallas garment industry hit the big time; last year it provided jobs for 10,000 and produced a sales volume of $60 million.

While growing, it expanded into high-style lines for such swank stores as Dallas' own Neiman-Marcus, and into specialties like the stylish maternity gowns made by Dallas' Page Boy (TIME, Sept. 6, 1948). One big Dallas maker, Justin McCarty, Inc., rang up $2,500,000 in 1949 sales with sportswear items. But nothing in Dallas had grown quite as fantastically as Nardis Sportswear, run by high-pressured little Bernard L. Gold, 51.

Tough-talking Benny Gold often sounds like a New York cab driver, and used to be one. Born in Russia, he started a taxicab company in Brooklyn soon after World War I, went broke when he tried to buck the cab drivers during a taxi strike in 1938. Confesses Benny: "They run me out."

Corduroy Man. Benny ran all the way to Texas, where his brother Irving was part owner of Nardis, a near-bankrupt dress firm which he wanted Benny to pull out of the red. To the horror of other Dallas garmentmakers, who are still only 20% unionized, Benny called on the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union for help. I.L.G.W.U. engineers taught him an assembly-line method of making dresses. Benny not only signed a union contract but became the first Dallas manufacturer to employ Negroes. Benny's experiment was a success: from a one-shop company with 15 machines, he expanded Nardis into five plants employing 1,100. He specialized in the use of corduroy for women's suits and dresses; last year, with a gross of $5.5 million, he topped all other Dallas manufacturers.

To the buyers at last week's show, Benny was Mr. Dallas. As president of the Dallas Fashion Center, formed three years ago by 40 of the biggest manufacturers, he whooped it up with a welcoming party at Pappy's Showland nightclub, got up early to greet buyers at his own shop. The buyers thought Dallas styles were just as good as Dallas hospitality, began placing orders at a rate of $1,000,000 a day. By show's end they had ordered nearly $5,000,000 worth. To Ben Gold and his competitors, it was tailor-made proof that the Dallas fashion business was no mere overgrown war baby.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.