After working as a stylist in Paris, Elizabeth Hawes (1903-71) launched one of the first American design houses in Depression-era New York. Hawes was an outspoken critic of the fashion industry and a champion of ready-to-wear styles. Fashion Is Spinach, her witty and astute memoir, offers an insider's critique of the fashion scene during the 1920s and '30s.
"I don't know when the word fashion came into being, but it was an evil day," Hawes...