Hollywood, the fashion makeover came to represent the way to the top. As Sarah Berry

points out, "fashion was a medium of new beginnings": a working girl, especially in the

Depression era, could make herself over "thanks to hard work and a few Adrian outfits"

(xviii). That is certainly the narrative intention of Leisen's Easy Living, where the

fortuitous acquisition of a fur coat enables a penniless working girl to cross class lines

and end up marrying a billionaire. I will return to that plot in a moment, but what

interests me is the way in which, for a fleeting instant, that narrative is ruptured. Insofar

as a mundane fashion accessory becomes surreal, it functions as a virtual show-stopper,

arresting the screwball plot dead in its tracks. So, in the rags-to-riches tale, let us focus on

the rags for now. By unfurling the details of the fur coat that descends on Jean Arthur's

head after its wealthy owner discards it like a piece of trash, we might accidentally

uncover a different kind of Hollywood tale.

 What follows is that tale, told not as a causal narrative but as a series of moments

or episodes. I call it "Episodes in Chiffon," because it is couture that facilitates the

encounter between the seemingly mismatched fabrics of Classic Hollywood and

Surrealism. The Surrealists were fascinated by fashion's potential for revealing the

marvelous in the everyday-in an unmotivated manner. For Classic Hollywood, the

connection was more straightforward: fashion sells, although as the next section will

demonstrate, there is a dramatic shift from the 1920s to the 1930s in the manner in which

articles of fashion are "sold" in the movies. But this is not a history of film couture.

Instead, like the ragpicker, I fashion a history out of articles that were once quite

fashionable and have now become outmoded, in order to trace what la mode reveals

about le mode, what fashion designing unexpectedly reveals about the method of studio