Fashions from the Desert

THE desert of Arizona and that spectacular region of Earth's surface known as the Southwest, of which Arizona is the throbbing heart, has affected men and women in many different ways through the sun-drenched years. Reactions to the desert and the Southwest are always violent. It is either a region of great beauty, of impenetrable space and silence, mysterious and ageless, of vitalizing freshness and life; or it is a region of grim and repelling harshness, a terrorizing force from which the beholder runs in fear. It depends on the beholder.

The writer and the painter find in the desert inspiring wells of loveliness, and many people have come to interpret the beauty of the desert by written word or by the paint brush. The old-timers say that once the desert gets its hold on you, the hold can never be broken.

The desert of Carmen Larison is a beautiful desert, full of life and loveliness, vibrant and fresh, the desert of the gay flowers and blooms in the constant caress of Spring, full of the soft laughter of the wind, sunshine and warm rain. This charming daughter of the West, Seeking inspiration in her native desert, Miss Larison, talented and inspired daughter of the West, has captured the gaiety and freshness of her surroundings for designs for dress fabrics.

inspired by the beauty of her life-long surroundings, has interpreted into designs for dresses and fabrics the freshness and beauty of her desert. So original have been her designs, and yet so faithful to their source have they been, that this spring women all over America, thousands of whom have never seen the desert, will be paying unspoken homage to it by wearing desert fashions.

A series of prints called "Desert Miniatures" was released this Spring. These designs are finding their way into smart shops and the wardrobes of smartly dressed women all over America. In the series are such designs as Yucca and Papago Park, both very popular. When they were first displayed one department store in the East ordered 46 dozen of dresses carrying these designs and another in San Francisco devoted a whole window to a Desert design display. A third design in this group was titled by Miss Larison as Ironwood Blossoms, but the fabric designer changed the name to Adobe Flower. This incidentally is one of the gayest of the series. Miss Larison's early designs were so successful and unique that a prominent

Nijoni

The Navajo Indians inspired the Nijoni design. Nijoni is a Navajo word meaning “beautiful.” These are authentic Indian symbols, found in Navajo handicrafts. Worn by Mrs. R. A. Kirkman.

textile manufacturer called at her door one day and commissioned her to create a second series to be known as “Prints of the Southwest.” That the manufacturer knocked at the right door and called on the right person was soon evident. Her designs for this seriesRodeo, Longhorn, Boots and Saddles, and Let 'Er Buck-are typical of the Southwest and have been released and met with unusual success.

That the motif for her prints should be carried out to complete fulfillment, Miss Larison has named certain colors as the characteristic colors of the prints she designs. So it is that thousands and thousands of American women this Spring will be wearing such colors as Apache Flame instead of red, Superstition Gold instead of yellow, Canyon Copper instead of rust, Desert Dawn instead of pink, and Palo Verde instead of green. Fashions, you see, come from the Desert.

Miss Larison is a very versatile young lady. Her girlhood was spent on an Arizona ranch and there she acquired that love for the desert and for the life of the West that has had realization in fabric design. Her desert has been her home and she knows it, not from the viewpoint of an interested onlooker, but from the viewpoint of one who has had it about her all her life. She has seen the desert in all of its moods and tempers. She knows its delicate colorings and its tenderest flowers. She knows the desert as one should know the desert who calls it home. She's a lovely person, radiant with health, of tremendous vitality and with that fresh beauty that seems to speak of starlight nights on the desert and gay afternoons in the sunshine of the open range.

Miss Larison is a very modern young lady, with a taste and passion for clothes that was, perhaps, the impelling force that turned her attention toward fabric design. She received her college education at Arizona State Teachers College at Tempe, where she studied art, music and dramatics. After college she became a teacher of music in the public schools of Phoenix, and remains so today. When you realize how much she has accomplished on what may be described as her spare time, you realize then how active and energetic she is.

Of course, a young lady who wrote the score and lyrics, directed, produced, designed costumes and scenery for two complete musical shows in college is naturally an active person. Anyway, life is such fun there isn't much time for loafing.

Miss Larison has an instinctive feel for style, and

Concho Belt and Shoes

A concho belt is always a gay accessory. The conchos on this belt were designed by Miss Larison. The playshoes, shown below, are by Joyce of Pasadena for Goldwaters. They feature the Nijoni design.

Yucca

Miss Larison's Yucca design is becoming extremely popular. This design was taken from the yucca, that sun-drenched plant which reigns where the desert and the foothills meet. Worn by Miss Helen Ruth. The sketch below shows the Yucca pattern in greater detail. Miss Ruth is wearing a necklace fashioned by Miss Larison.

largest textile manufacturer in the world. Success, apparently, was becoming a habit with Miss Larison. Arthur Bier & Sons were charmed with her designs. They possessed freshness and originality and they caught the feeling and spirit of the desert that had never before appeared in fabric design. They bought seven patterns, the exquisite "Desert Miniatures," last autumn and put her to work doing another series. Today she is considered one of the most promising designers in the business, which is considered something in the world of fashion a most exacting world full of young talent and able men and women. This is a rigid world, this world of fashion, but rich are its rewards for the deserving.

The first series of prints taken by Arthur Bier & Sons are used on a fine-spun rayon material, one of the quality fabrics. This summer, "Prints of the Southwest" will be produced by this great fabric manufacturing establishment in cotton. These series include Rodeo, Longhorn, Boots and Saddles, and Let 'Er Buck, with designs bolder and more pronounced and colors stronger and more vivid than in the delicate Desert series.

Into this picture moves with imposing magnitude the Donnelly Garment Comcoupled, as we say, with an all-con-suming fondness for clothes (if you meet her on the street you would think she had just stepped out of a smart page from Vogue) it is of little wonder that she took up fabric designing.

The success of the Branding Iron design of two seasons back set her a'thinking. So one day, shortly thereafter, she appeared at Goldwaters in Phoenix with a portfolio of designs which she felt would be successful.

Ancient Indian symbols, which she had gathered after considerable research, was the story she told in cloth. Each symbol was authentic and represented long research excursions on her part into the Indian country. The design was so attractive, Goldwaters accepted it and subsequently it became a best-seller and was later displayed from the pages of such magazines as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, New Yorker and Town and Country. This was the first Carmen Larison print and it bore the name of "Nijoni," which in Navajo means beautiful.

The success of the Nijoni prints was the spark that kindled great activity in every one of her spare moments. When you learned that she was working on a new series of designs you knew it would be good, and somehow or other you felt that the next series would be as successful as the first.

So it was, by a fortuitous chain of circumstances, that she completed her second series and had the privilege of showing them to the head of the design department of Arthur Bier & Sons, the company, the makers of Nelly Don dresses. Nelly Don had occasion to review the fabric designs of Miss Larison adopted by Albert Bier & Sons, and immediately ordered five of the fabrics for their own exclusive use.

In Spring advertising Nelly Don has been featuring the Carmen Larison prints this season in national periodicals and promotion material. Through this dress manufacturing concern, hundreds of thousands of women all over the land will learn of such names as Papago Park and Yucca, and of such colors as Ocotillo Red, Azule, the clear blue of an Arizona sky, and Navajo, the rich red so beloved by the Indians of our state.

Two other famous textile manufacturing plants have used her designs. The Royal Miss Dress Factory of New York is featuring Miss Larison's Long Horn pattern for attractive summer cloth, and

Papago Park

"Papago Park" is the name appropriately given the design which appears in the dress worn (below) by Mrs. W. A. Thompson. The designer took the name and the pattern from Papago Park, near Phoenix, where many desert plants are to be found. Many plants found in Papago Park are reproduced in the design.

Longhorn

In a series of designs to be released this spring under the fitting name of "Prints of the Southwest," "Longhorn" is one that will prove very popular. Dress worn by Miss Barbara Gustin. Miss Larison was commissioned by a textile manufacturer to design this series.

the California Hand Block Mills at Hermosa Beach, manufacturers for designs adopted by Goldwaters, has done such things as the Nijoni prints.

Her deft fingers run into creations of other types, still pertaining to wearing apparel. For instance, she has designed conchos for concho belts, which Goldwaters have had manufactured for their own use. She has gone into the manufacture of costume jewelry with materials of surprising simplicity. She has taken ordinary pinto beans, shellacked them to a high lustre and strings them fetchingly into necklaces. She also has done the same with spaghetti, dying spaghetti necklaces in all shades of colors, fitting accessories for the informal dress.

That Miss Larison is successful goes without saying. She has had several offers to join the staffs of designing artists, but so far she has refused such offers. She feels that here in Arizona

Hieroglyphics

Little did some ancient people, scrawling uninterpretable marks on ageless rocks centuries ago throughout the Southwest, ever dream that those marks would become the design in dresses for smart young ladies of Twentieth Century America. This dress, worn by Miss Mary Ellen Ovens, contains the Hieroglyphic pattern.

Goldwaters in Phoenix, alert to the march of fashion and zealous for designs and patterns characteristic of the Southwest, has featured this spring a window showing "Desert Miniatures," designs by Miss Larison. (Photo by Floyd Getsinger.) Piquant sketches show the verve of desert and western motifs in dress fabrics.

Her source of inspiration is her source of inspiration, the desert that she has loved since childhood, the desert where, as a student artist at Tempe college, she has spent many long afternoons painting and trying to interpret its beauty and impelling force. The West is her home. She is neither a stranger to the ranch nor to the lonely trails that lead far away and deep into the land of the Hopi and the Navajo.

She knows, too, that somnolent and dreamy land of Yesterday, the other side of the border, that is called Mexico. She knows the Indian, on his high mesa, and the Mexican in his little adobe hut in a sleepy Mexican town.

She knows much about this land of Vista and Vastness, this level land of the saguaro and the yucca, with the blue mountains on the other side.

They say, though, that to get along in the world of fashion you should betake yourself to the industrial East, for there, among the Canyons of Skyscrapers, you will have a better chance for success.

Miss Larison is reluctant to do that. She prefers to strive for the stars in her own land where she feels she will attain the perfection she so earnestly seeks sooner than in uncongenial surroundings.

Well, you never can tell. There is so much to be done. There are more patterns to be made, colors to be experimented with, and occasionally a new dress will pop up in one's mind that has to be transformed on paper and then made out of goods. And, anyway, it has been fun translating the Desert and the West into designs that will be worn by women all the way from Chesapeake Bay to Treasure Island..... R. C.