The casual outdoor California lifestyle and the clothes that actors and actresses wore in their personal lives also had an impact on American fashion. Not until Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn appeared in public in men's trousers did it begin to be possible for the average woman to appear in public in pants, although admittedly in restricted situations. Even women such as Amelia Earhart and her fellow female pilots of the late 1920s and 30s (Louise Thaden, Elinor Smith, and Bobbi Trout), who might have been expected to have a reason for appearing in trousers, rarely did so until late in the 1930s. A Hollywood men's tailor named Watson was apparently known for making trouser suits for "Garbo, Dietrich, Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, and all the knowing ones in the movie colony."(55) Bettina Ballard wrote of Marlene Dietrich, a fellow passenger on a transatlantic crossing in 1937, that "she wore slacks and a man's jacket and a fedora all day -the first woman I had ever seen wear pants in public."(56) In contrast, in Paris at the same time, according to Ballard, women went to Creed for the perfect ladylike (skirted) suit.

Stage celebrities appeared in ads for fashionable commodities in the 1910s. Hazel Dawn, star of The Pink Lady on Broadway, was used by H. R. Mallinson & Company in their silk ads of 1915. Many other stars of both stage and silent film followed for both Mallinson and other fabric and garment manufacturers. Irene Castle was an important promotional link for Corticelli Silks during the early 1920s [fig. 91]. "Irene Castle Corticelli Fashions," designedby New York ready-to-wear firms Jesse Woolf & Company, Jacob Rappaport & Company, and Joseph A. Morris & Company, were available at "an exclusive dealer in each city."(57) The new attitude of the late 1930s toward original American design is shown in a newspaper ad for Best & Company from October 24, 1938. Day and evening dresses in "The Algerian Silhouette, sponsored by Gertrude Lawrence" featured a draped front and the proud claim, "Introduced by Best's."(58)

Clothes for actresses on the Broadway stage were often provided by well known dressmaking establishments in New York. Joseph, one of the more exclusive custom dressmakers in New York (producing both copies and/or adaptations of Paris models and original designs), made the costumes Louise Gunning wore in a play entitled The Balkan Princess.(59) Madame Margé received the Mallinson Cup for excellence in stage costume design for clothing Marilyn Miller of Ziegfield Follies fame. Hattie Carnegie outfitted Gertrude Lawrence for her American stage appearances. Even Mainbocher, on his return to New York from Paris after the outbreak of war in 1939, made clothes for Broadway plays. This added a certain prestige all around: publicity for the designer, the actress, the play. It may have also been financially important, although it is unclear whether the designers provided the clothes for free, counting on the advertising value of the publicity, or were paid for their efforts. Hawes states in Fashion is Spinach that many producers expected to pay low prices for wardrobes for their stars and that most stars expected wardrobes that would strengthen their stardom, not their characterization.