Couture and Commerce: The Transatlantic Fashion Trade in the 1950s by Alexandra Palmer (review)

496 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Critics sometimes viewed the United States and the Soviet Union as two sides of a very dangerous coin (an attitude that caused fits in the Reagan White House). They also entertained serious doubts about the political and moral validity of NATO=s heavy reliance on nuclear weapons to maintain the fragile peace. Simpson makes very good use of existing historical sources and extensive interviews with numerous Canadian policy makers to explore the complex origins of the belief systems attached to the two groups. Moreover, she skilfully uses a case study B the notoriously fumbled nuclear policy of the Diefenbaker government from 1957 until 1963 B to present her argument. But there are some problems. As Simpson points out in her conclusion, her ability to deal with issues beyond 1978 was hampered greatly by the fact that researchers are still not allowed access to many of the official records they so desperately require to provide effective explanations of more recent events. That problem is not likely to be resolved soon. More puzzling to me, as a historian of Canadian-American political and military relations, is the near-total absence of American and British sources in Simpson=s monograph. Yes, this is a book about Canadian decision makers, but I find it difficult to comprehend how one can truly explain Canadian policy towards NATO and nuclear weapons without addressing American concerns about Canada, especially given American dominance of NATO and nuclear strategy. Just what were Americans in the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House thinking about as they watched their Canadian counterparts attempt to sort their military /political problems? Despite this omission, Simpson=s book must be read if one hopes to understand Canada=s complex connections to NATO and the bomb. (GALEN ROGER PERRAS) Alexandra Palmer. Couture and Commerce: The Transatlantic Fashion Trade in the 1950s University of British Columbia Press. viii, 352. $65.00 Alexandra Palmer terms the 1950s the golden age of haute couture, an era of French genius in the design and production of exquisite garments, matched by creative marketing that gave French couturiers a virtual monopoly in the most exclusive of trades B at least for a time. Dior, Chanel, Fath, Balenciaga, and Balmain were masters of post-war haute couture on both sides of the Atlantic, directing a system of taste for an elite clientele whose social lives were comparatively more formal and more structured than those which prevail today. Palmer explores the world which created and dispensed couture to select buyers, tracing as well the consumer practices of Toronto women who loved the clothes or needed the prestige of these garments to sustain their social standing. humanities 497 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Exclusive designs necessitated an exclusive clientele. In post-war Paris, bringing sellers and buyers together in this stylized pas de deux required the intervention of women with specialist knowledge and contacts. Introductions were needed for the uninitiated, the newly rich, the first-time traveller. For a price, these were made available by society vendeuses like Laura Bacon, who smoothed the path for would-be consumers of Parisian luxuries. Once approved and in the couturiers= salons, vendeuses learned the preferences and social needs of their clients, overseeing fittings and ensuring appropriate selections, dispensing artifacts of taste to North American women. But even as French couturiers re-established the cachet of their designs following the Second World War, the pressures of international marketing changed the ways in which designs reached the public. Palmer tracks the roles of some of Toronto=s most prominent retailers B Eaton=s, Holt Renfrew, Creeds, and Simpson=s B who brought original and interpreted versions of French styles to Toronto women. Stores like Eaton=s faced conflicting impulses. On the one hand, they garnered considerable prestige by showing original designs from Paris in seasonal shows, offering these to their best clients. At the same time, the desire to sell more items with an approximation of French style, to a wider range of customers, drove retailers to revise their old relationships with couturiers. As Paris designers...