Word: bendelari
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...York, to allow designers to copyright their creations. A copyright is almost automatically secured by depositing a work of art (book, picture, music), and $2 with the Library of Congress. To prove that even shoes may be art, there appeared before the committee, last week, Mary Evelyn ("Fiji") Bendelari, 27, stubborn, fuzzy-haired Paris-New York shoe designer, originator of the Deauville sandal...
While she was fighting one battle in Washington, Miss Bendelari heard that she had won another in Paris, against no less impressive an opponent than the Svenska Tändsticksaktiebolaget, creditor of nations, holder of huge match monopolies (TIME, Oct. 28). The Swedish Match Trust had bought the building containing her tiny Paris shoe store facing the Place Vendome; she, shrewd, had refused to surrender her $150-a-year lease even when wreckers began to demolish the building. Last week the Trust capitulated, paid her $25,000 for her lease...
Once Miss Bendelari lived in Joplin, Mo. She went to school in Toronto: studied, worked at costume design in New York. In 1924, vacatoning in France, she learned that French shoes (broad, short) did not fit the feet (long, narrow) of U. S. women. To please them, she borrowed $1,000 from her father, set a solitary shoemaker to work with designs of her own. Among the most expensive in Paris, her shoes were immediately successful: for a while she was manager, packer, messenger, saleswoman; soon she had two factories in France, a small mauve-and-gold shop in Paris...