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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 731

City there was a place that belonged to the Governor always where he could go. The Fifth Avenue apartment was not home, but he had to go there.

Somebody furnished it for them. I think it was the lady who had helped Mrs. Smith with her clothes, Rose Pedrick. Rose Pedrick's sister, cousin, or something or other, had been a schoolmate of Mrs. Smith's at the convent when she was at boarding school. She was when Al was Governor the head buyer of ladies' clothes at Altman's. She undertook to dress Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith had always been properly dressed in the years before when I knew her. When they lived in Oliver Street, she was a nice, pretty, modest little woman. She had what I would regard as perfectly suitable clothes, looked nice, neat and attractive.

The lady at Altman's thought that was not elegant enough for the Governor's wife and proceeded to say so. Mrs. Smith's own taste would have led her to the same kind of thing that she'd always bought, but this lady at Altman's thought they should be more elegant. She started to buy things that had passementerie, spangles, sequins and things on it. They were made quite fancily and very stylishly. She bought great big furs, huge fox furs that were then the fashion and too big for Mrs. Smith. Her clothes were over-elaborate.





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