Le Lycee Francais de Los Angeles - Actualites Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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WomenVSMd ; A Woman ' s Finest Accessory Is A Man ' By JACKIE DASHIELL Herald-E,xamin« r Women ' Editor When Lilly Dache came to Los Angeles in 1952, she apologized to a woman reporter that the personal wardrobe she brought along only con- tained 18 small hats. This week the noted de- signer, whose career was launched world-wide with her chapeau creations, arrived in Los Angeles hat- less. Women ' s hats are in fashion today, but I per- sonally will never make them again, she says with a determined firming of her chin. Women ' s fash- ion is so very simple today and there is such imagina- tivehair styles, a woman only needs a little stocking cap for the wind. Small, pixie-like in her blonde wig and elaborately embroidered black sweat- er and pants set, all of which are self-designed, she looks at her husband of 42 years with a mis- chievious grin as she an- nounces, After all, a woman ' s finest accessory is a man. He is Jean Despres, French-born (as is his wife) who came to the United States in 1922 as a perfumer to assist for a few weeks at Coty ' s and stayed for 50-years with that firm, retiring only recently. The couple met on a blind date in New York, where she arrived in 1924 with a few dollars, high hopes and a sense of big adventure. From the beginning the couple loved to travel and honeymooned for 21 days about the United States on 21 different trains. They have only recently com- pleted a 90-day around the world trip to celebrate his retirement and are en route to Mexico, where he has a separate business established. We live six-months in Paris and six-months in New York and travel to Los Angeles at least once a year, Miss Dache ' ex- plains. New York time is divided between a 200 acre farm in Bedford, and a penthouse in the city. One of the first women ' s fashion designers to go into menswear, Miss Dache ' s trip to the west coast is to select materials for the line of men ' s neckties which she designs for Cas- tle Neckwear, headquar- tered on Maple St., Los Angeles. Her menswear line is added to designs ot wigs, fragrances, cosmetics, interior decorating and architecture, but, mention the name, Lilly Dache, and the average woman still thinks of hats. She still remembers her first commercial hat. It was a cloche like what they are wearing now, with cherries tied with a bow. Periodically I brought it back. Simple fashions always repeat themselves. Marian Davies bought one, I remember. Her love of cherries goes back to her childhood. Mother told me I was ugly. I had protuding teeth. So I used to drape things around my head . . . scarfs with cherries pinned to them . . . and dangle cherries from my ears. Do girls still do things like that? In the new Eleanor and Franklin book a par- agraph refers to the six blue velvet hat designs Miss Dache sent Mrs. Roosevelt from which to make a selection. She kept them all. Mrs. Roosevelt was a very charming person . . . a magnificent person, recalls the designer. But, it wasn ' t only velvet hats. She had a friend, June Hamilton Rhodes, who represented the velvet industry and who talked her into wearing blue vel- vet nightgowns. They were known as the Eleanor Blue Velvet Nightgown, she li

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' Today ' s Woman Needs Only A Little Stocking Cap For The Wind ' ...Lilly Dache Miss Dache introduced in 1942 (upper left) a Russian cos- sack type hat in black rabbit ' s wool with rows of red, green, and blue tassels and, in 1945 (upper right) a bonnet of turquoise net with brim of lavender taffeta and heaped with plastic flowers. Lilly Dache gained fame and fortune in the fashion world through the fluff and feathers of her women ' s hat designs. Since branching into cos- metics, jewelry, women ' s wear and, latest of all, menswear designs, she has declared, I will not design hats anymore. The reason for her deci- sion, even in a year that brings hats back to the fashion horizon stronger than ever, is that she be- lieves she has reached a point when her fashion should be for everyone. My hats were custom- made. They were one-of-a- kind. They had to be ex- pensive. Too expensive. One of the loveliest Lilly Dache de- signs, introduced in 1943, was a small white fox body tilted over the eye and trimmed in black bird wings (left) and another, introduced in the spring of 1945, was the tilted turban of curled blue-white feathers and pink and white roses (above). i?