The attribution of ready-to-wear designs is even more complicated. Some retailers sold under "house" brand names, with designs either by in-house stylists, free-lance designers, or perhaps by stylists employed by the wholesale firm that actually manufactured the product. The National Cloak and Suit Company, a mail-order manufacturer/retailer of women's and children's ready-to-wear, kept its stylists anonymous. In 1922, Franklin Simon trademarked its store-brand "Bramley" dresses, which were advertised not only in the store's catalogue, but also in the newspapers, with large ads introducing the styles for the new season or holiday wear. The Fall 1923 store catalogue describes these as "Originated by and exclusive with Franklin Simon & Co." and also warns, "Registered in the United States Patent Office -Our rights will be fully protected."(46) Best & Company had its in-house brands, including the 1926 "Shirtmaker" shirtwaist dress, as did Peck & Peck and other department and specialty stores. Best and Franklin Simon were among the first retailers to promote quality cotton dresses for activities other than keeping house. The originators of these styles are currently unknown and may be difficult to identify, given the scarcity of archival material related to defunct retail establishments. This type of everyday garment, adaptable to many of a woman's normal activities, remained popular, with variations, for decades. One wholesale manufacturer noted in the 1960s that "his firm turns out 150 to 200 styles in the course of a season, but works within two basic silhouettes, the sheath and the shirtwaist."(47)

In the 1930s, many previously anonymous ready-to-wear designers began to surface as important names in the fashion field. The occasional newspaper or trade-journal article mentions ready-to-wear designers by name [fig. 88]. "St. Louis' Designing Women," an article from late 1939, is unusually interesting in that it gives the names and occasionally the salaries of some of the best designers in the St. Louis wholesale trade. Grace Ashley, Grace Durocher, Grace Davile, Bessie Recht (who also taught design at Washington University), Dorothy Garrison, and Marian McCoy are named as being among the best designers for the "Junior" market. Grace Davile is said to have earned $10,000 a year from her employer, the Doris Dodson Company. The Donnelly Garment Company in Kansas City (Missouri) started making their "Nelly Don" dresses in 1916. A twentieth-anniversary publicity booklet proudly stated that the company's "designers create Nelly Dons from...exclusive fabrics and original designs" and that they offer "important hidden values...lingerie strap[s], generous hems...and side seam allowance."(48) According to Elizabeth Hawes (admittedly not the most unbiased of observers), few ready-to-wear manufacturers concerned themselves with these types of quality dressmaker details.

Dorothy Shaver, an executive at Lord & Taylor, started in 1932 to campaign strongly for recognition for American designers. She began her promotion with three young women who were fairly new to designing, though not to the trade: Muriel King, Clare Potter, and Elizabeth Hawes. Many others followed, including Tina Leser, Bonnie Cashin, Tom Brigance, Vera Maxwell, and Helen Cookman. In response to a revived nationalist fervor for American design following the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Lord & Taylor opened The Designers' Shop in October 1940. The forerunner of many department-store designer boutiques, it was "a new American effort -featuring 10 of the most successful professional designers in the American fashion field -Frances Troy Stix, Charles Cooper, Bertha Altholz, Karen Stark, Vera Jacobs, Zelma Golden, Fritzie Hannah, Pat Warren, Vera Host and Will Saunders -who will create exclusive dresses for Lord & Taylor."(49)