Harper's Bazaar, Mademoiselle, Vogue, Fortune, Life; each of these magazines carried articles in the 1940s celebrating American fashion creators. Harper's Bazaar listed its top ten American wholesale designers in a feature entitled "They Have Designs on You," found in the issue of September 15, 1940. Vincent Monte-Sano of Monte-Sano and Pruzan, Nettie Rosenstein, Maurice Rentner, Jane Derby, Norman Norell and Jean-Louis Berthault of Hattie Carnegie, Anthony Blotta, Stella Brownie of Fox-Brownie, and Bruno of Spectator Sportswear made the cut. Vogue for February 1, 1940, listed not only wholesale but custom designers and came up with a different group of names. Obviously, there were many successful Americans from whom to choose.

Nettie Rosenstein was a ready-to-wear designer who had two careers in the industry. She retired in 1927 from the firm she had run for almost ten years, returned in 1930 to design for another company, and then re-established herself in 1931 under her own name [fig. 89]. In a New York Times interview for the "Women's Page" in March 1939, Rosenstein is said to have "bid for a restricted but sound patronage."(50) Her work was wholesaled to high-end retail shops, which, as late as 1934, still sold them under the label of the shop, not the name of the designer. As one article explained, retailers "usually endeavored to give their salons the Paris feeling...It would scarcely enhance that feeling if they were to announce that many of their most irresistible dresses were designed by Nettie Rosenstein in West Forty-seventh Street in New York...The name of Rosenstein, let alone being soft-pedalled, is not being pedalled at all."(51)

By the mid-1930s, Hollywood costume designers and the "sunshine culture" of California had proven to be a vital force in American fashion. Many designers either started out or ended up as couturiers in Los Angeles. The clothes that Adrian, Howard Greer, Irene, Travis Banton, and Edith Head put on the American movie screen were seen and absorbed by an enormous audience. Certain trends from film are well known: the Letty Lynton dress, versions of Gone With the Wind dresses [fig. 90], and the broad-shouldered Joan Crawford look created by Adrian. Vogue in 1932 acknowledged that "The Hollywood influence -credit Marlene Dietrich in "Shanghai Express" -has invaded Paris at last. The film was first shown at Mrs. Fellowes [sic] house in Paris, after which she appeared at almost every party in a different arrangement of coq...."(52) Several years later the New York Times observed that period dramas "had a particular impact on the mode" in a rotogravure feature illustrating actresses in costume for several upcoming films in 1938.(53) Articles from the Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Fortune, and Nation's Business attested to the growing importance of West Coast creators and markets in the overall American fashion scene.(54)