1926 | Everyday Life
Everyday Life
Society decorator Elsie De Wolfe is married March 10 to British diplomat Sir Charles Mendl, whose wealth enables her to throw lavish parties at their homes in New York, Beverly Hills, and Versailles that the new Lady Mendl—now 60 and blue-haired—has decorated with delicate 18th-century furniture and her usual glazed cotton chintz fabrics.
Italian hairdresser Antonio Buzzacchino invents a new permanent waving method that will make the "permanent" widely fashionable (see 1906).
La robe "Ford" introduced by Coco Chanel is a supple black jersey dress that parodies a maid's uniform.
Playwright George Bernard Shaw endorses the new fashion for shorter, lighter dresses, saying they are for "real human beings" rather than "upholstered Victorian angels," but traditionalists deplore the rising hemlines, claiming that they bring a decline in morals, and physicians warn that the boyish new "flapper" look causes women to weaken their health by excessive dieting. British doctor J. S. Russell tells the Institute of Hygiene that women are turning to alcohol and drugs in a desperate effort to cope with their hectic lives.
Slide fasteners get the name "zippers" after a promotional luncheon at which English novelist Gilbert Frankau, 42, has said, "Zip! It's open! Zip! It's closed!" (see Sundback, 1913). Rome-born Paris couturière Elsa Schiaparelli, 46, showed her first collection 2 years ago, having worked at New York as a scriptwriter and translator from 1919 to 1922. She opens her own establishment on the rue de la Paix; her workrooms will employ 2,000 people by 1930; her company will be earning about 120 million francs per year; she will use brightly colored zippers in her 1930 sportswear line, and when the general patents expire in 1931, the zipper will come into wide use not only in men's trousers (see 1936), jeans, windbreakers, and sweaters but also in women's dresses and other apparel (see YKK, 1933).
The first blue jeans with slide fasteners are introduced by H. D. Lee Co., which has opened plants at Kansas City, South Bend, Trenton, and Minneapolis to produce one-piece Union-Alls and Lee Riders (see 1911). Lee also introduces U-shaped saddle crotches plus rise and seat proportions graduated with individual waists and inseams (see 1936).
The first electric steam irons go on sale at New York department stores, but although their moisture helps prevent scorching they find few buyers at $10 when regular electric irons cost only $6.
Q-Tips are introduced by Polish-born U.S. entrepreneur Leo Gerstenzang, who 3 years ago watched his wife give their infant daughter a bath, saw how she twirled a ball of cotton on the end of a toothpick to use as a swab, and created a ready-made swab that his Leo Gerstenzang Infant Novelty Co. sold initially under the brand name Baby Gays.