THE 1940s: FASHION: PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

In 1940 Elizabeth Arden, the cosmetics and skin cream mogul, branched out into clothing with the assistance of designer Charles James.

In the fall of 1945 Julia Coburn, former director of the Tobe-Coburn School of Fashion Design, articulated the postwar dilemma facing designers: what will women want to wear after years of wartime restrictions?

Movie star Rita Hayworth set off a controversy in her title role in Gilda (1946) for the scene in which she strips off her arm-length gloves. While the sexy scene dazzled thousands of her male fans, it upset many critics and conservatives who deemed it inappropriate for the viewing public.

During World War II Hollywood designer Edith Head visited Manhattan and expressed nostalgia in The New York Times for the lushness of Hollywood costumes before the war: "How well I remember the day when we would swirl fox skins around the hem of a secretary's dress or put a white satin uniform on a trained nurse. Now we hold to stark realism."

On 28 May 1940 William S. Knudsen, president of General Motors, resigned to assume the chairmanship of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's newly formed National Advisory Defense Committee, a group composed of business leaders to help ready America to enter the war.

In 1943 Eleanor Lambert, a fashion publicist who helped establish New York as a world fashion center, founded the Costume Institute, which later became part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and helped start the annual fashion awards sponsored by Coty.

During World War II designer Mainbocher designed uniforms for the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (Waves), the Women's Marines, the American Red Cross, and the Girl Scouts.

In 1940 designer Vera Maxwell showed her "reefer suit," a daytime suit consisting of a reed-slim coat with matching skirt and a simple blouse.

Germaine Monteil, a New York fashion designer who later founded a cosmetics firm, debuted a Renaissance-inspired evening dress at a special fashion exhibit held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1942. The exhibit featured mannequins wearing contemporary clothes by New York designers scattered throughout the galleries.

In 1947 critic Lewis Mumford pointed out the limits of the International Style in domestic architecture when he praised the Bay Region style for its "native and humane form of modernism." These architects, he wrote, "took care that their houses did not resemble factories or museums."

In 1941 architect Wallace Neff unveiled his "igloo" design for a house made by depositing concrete on an inflated canvas balloon in order to create a circular structure.

Women's Wear Daily fashion editor Winifred Ovite complained in August 1944 of the abandonment of American-made designs in the rush to "salute a liberated Paris."

In 1942 Virginia Pope, fashion editor of The New York Times, started the annual "Fashion of the Times" show.

In 1947 Sophie of Saks became the first designer to be featured on the cover of Time.

In 1948 Hudson automobile designer Frank Spring unveiled an entirely new look for postwar American cars. His "step down" design dropped the car's floor, enabling the roof to be lowered without a loss of head-room.

On 27 January 1945 fashion heiress Gloria Vanderbilt di Cicco, who stood to inherit $4.5 million on her twenty-first birthday on 20 February, announced that she and her husband, Pasquale di Cicco, had separated and would seek a divorce. On 21 April Vanderbilt married orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski in Mexico.

In 1942 Sydney Wragge of the B. H. Wragge Company helped popularize women's separates by offering stores and editors brochures about how the clothes worked together and guidelines for how to promote and display them.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects in 1949 despite his never having joined the association.