Washington Star fashion editor Eleni Epstein wrote was the leading authority on designer Pauline Trigere. (She was a household name in her day.) Epstein wrote a chapter about Pauline in the above book. I just tracked down a first-edition copy on Amazon. This is a photo of Pauline’s star on the Fashion Hall of Fame in Manhattan that Lance and I took two years ago. We go to New York City each spring – the location of our first date. Last year we went through the Fashion Group International papers at the New York Public Library and learned more about Eleni.

Women’s page content was often described as the four Fs: family, fashion, food and furnishings. (This was often accompanied by another F: frivolous.) I’m examining the original four Fs as a way of rejecting that frivolous label. After all, those four Fs represent important parts of people’s lives and are an important part of history. The above API book described the voice of authority that a newspaper’s fashion editor held. (It’s newly digitized.) I’m applying that concept to my work on Eleni Epstein, the fashion editor at the Washington Star in the 1940s until the end of the newspaper. Eleni would have loved covering First Lady Michelle Obama’s fashion choices.