1928 | Everyday Life
Everyday Life
Welcome Wagon International, Inc., has its beginnings at Memphis, Tenn., where advertising agency head Thomas W. Briggs introduces new residents to his clients by hiring agents to make personal calls.
The British fashion house Lachasse has its beginnings in the couture sportswear branch of a textile company; started by Fred Singleton, its chief designer until 1933 will be Dublin-born London Polytechnic graduate Digby Morton, 21, who asserts that British women will insist on French labels and whose first collection next year will feature Ardara tweeds, large herringbone wools, and unusual color combinations such as lime green and duck-egg blue with dark brown in diagonal stripes and checks (see 1934).
A national survey of fashion on U.S. college campuses shows that Harris tweed is the most popular fabric among men, but club men at Princeton favor blue blazers with brass buttons.
Troy, N.Y.-born Cluett, Peabody & Co. research director Sanford L. (Lockwood) Cluett, 54, patents a "Sanforizing" process for cotton that limits shrinkage to no more than 1 percent (see Arrow shirt, 1921). Inventor Cluett joined his uncles' firm in 1919 after obtaining a number of patents in various unrelated fields, neckband (collar detached) shirts have been going out of fashion, but shrinkage has wrinkled shirts with permanently attached collars. Cluett has studied the issue, found that cotton is stretched lengthwise while moving through the mills that spin and finish it, reasoned that a pushing counteraction in the manufacturing process might correct the problem, and devised a high-speed machine in which cloth passes over a contracting elastic felt blanket.
Textile executive Spencer Love's Burlington Mills introduces rayon dresses that become highly fashionable as artificial silk hosiery and other apparel gain popularity (see commerce, 1923). Estimated worldwide production of rayon has grown to nearly 266 million pounds valued at more than $81 million (see commerce, 1934).
Helena Rubinstein sells her enterprise for $3 million (see 1914). She will buy it back next year for $1.5 million and have a $60 million business by the time of her death at age 94 in 1965.
The Breuer chair designed by Hungarian-born architect Marcel Lajos Breuer, 26, is introduced by Vienna's Gebruder Thonet of 1876 bentwood chair fame.
The La-Z-Boy recliner created by Monroe, Mich., woodworker Edward Knabusch and his farmer cousin Edwin Shoemaker, 21, is an upholstered deckchair. They will introduce the Reclina-Rocker in 1961.
Former $1 watch promoter Robert H. Ingersoll dies at Denver September 4 at age 68 (his wife, Roberta, committed suicide in December 1926).
Fleer's Dubble Bubble brand bubble gum goes on sale December 26 in a test at Philadelphia. Frank H. Fleer Co. cost accountant Walter E. Diemer, 23, is no chemist but has been experimenting for more than a year and found a formula that is stretchier and less sticky than existing formulae. His product is colored pink because that was the only food coloring Diemer had on hand; he takes a five-pound batch to a local grocer, who sells out in one afternoon, and Dubble Bubble will have no competition until the late 1940s. Fleer will receive no royalties but will travel around the world marketing the gum and teaching salesmen how to blow bubbles.