Fashion Is Spinach: How to Beat the Fashion Racket

After working as a stylist in Paris, Elizabeth Hawes (1903-71) launched one of the first American design houses in Depression-era New York. Hawes was an outspoken critic of the fashion industry and a champion of ready-to-wear styles. Fashion Is Spinach, her witty and astute memoir, offers an insider’s critique of the fashion scene during the 1920s and ’30s.
I don’t know when the word fashion came into being, but it was an evil day, Hawes declares. Style, she maintains, reflects an era’s mood, altering only with changes in attitude and taste. Fashion, conversely, exists only to perpetuate sales. Hawes denounces the industry’s predatory practices, advising readers to reject ever-changing fads in favor of comfortable, durable, flattering attire. Decades ahead of her time, she offers a fascinating and tartly observed behind-the-scenes look at the fashion industry’s economics, culture, and ethics.

American clothing designer Elizabeth Hawes (1903-71) was an outspoken critic of the fashion industry and champion of ready-to-wear styles. In addition to her work as a fashion stylist and journalist, she was among the first Americans to establish a reputation beyond Parisian haute couture as well as a union organizer and political activist.
Brooklyn-based writer Alice Gregory has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, Times Magazine, Slate, Elle, Harper’s, The Boston Globe, and other publications.