Conversely, although some couturiers did create wardrobes for Hollywood films, it was more often the Hollywood costume designer who made a name in films and then established a business in custom or ready-to-wear design. Adrian is perhaps the best known of these, but there were many others. Omar Kiam actually started in New York's wholesale dress business, went into film work, and then returned to New York to design for Ben Reig. Howard Greer was courted by the Celanese Corporation in 1937 to create an "exclusive collection, in Celanese fabrics, designed by an American and specially conceived for the great American sun season" [fig. 92].(60) Joset Walker, by 1940 the designer for wholesale dress manufacturer David Goodstein, had learned her craft ten years before, first in Saks Fifth Avenue's "Theatrical Department," then at RKO Studios in Hollywood. Norman Norell worked in film and stage costuming before joining Hattie Carnegie in 1928. It seems likely that the ease of movement between Hollywood or Broadway and Seventh Avenue fostered a kind of cross-pollination of ideas between the East and West Coasts. Perhaps this is one factor in the eventual recognition of an American style.

Much of the literature about fashion in the pre-World War II decades discusses the issue of exclusivity. Fault is found with expensive ready-to-wear clothing because, in order to be financially successful, a garment had to be sold in multiples, thereby increasing the probability that a woman might see someone else wearing the dress she had purchased. Importers of model gowns from Paris also came in for criticism since their goal was to sell enough copies of a model gown to pay for the cost of importing it. Tied closely to exclusivity was originality. Original models designed in this country were common enough in advertisements. Most importers of Paris models also developed original designs in-house. Advertisements in fashion magazines indicate that even small dressmakers knew the value of the words "exclusive" and "original" in relation to their wares. In Providence, for example, Anna Tirocchi's stationery in the mid 1920s listed "line, color, detail, distinction, individuality" as attributes of her own business. The question in the fashion press seemed to be, however, whether American design was indeed original or followed Paris's lead so closely as to be indistinguishable, except for that extra degree of elegance and sophistication that was supposed to mark a Paris original.

For as long as there have been fashion creators, there have been fashion copiers. Fashion literature in the first half of the twentieth century is awash in denunciations of "design piracy," whether the pirating is the unauthorized copying of Paris styles by American manufacturers and custom dressmakers or of expensive American ready-to-wear by lower-price manufacturers. Organizations such as the French Chambre Syndicale and the American Fashion Originators Guild attempted to fight design piracy and extend copyright protection to apparel and textile designs.

The early 1910s saw the first concerted efforts on the part of the French couture to halt the copying of their designs. Agreements between London's Royal Worcester Corset Company and couturiers in Paris and Vienna kept the former from giving any advance information of the "new curve" in its Spring line of corsets and so made headlines in Women's Wear in early 1912.(61) In February and April 1912, leading Paris couturiers held their Spring models back from both the Auteuil and Longchamps races, traditionally events of great importance to both the designers and their customers. The mannequins attended the races, but wore furs from the winter collections. The reason given was specifically to keep the clothes from being "immediately copied by the smaller houses and wholesale dressmakers, who only vulgarize the models."(62)