FOR clothes-conscious American women, the summer of discontent is over; this week the autumn of decision begins. Home from vacation, they face the most difficult fall shopping dilemma in decades: whether to go for the midi. Not since Christian Dior’s 1947 New Look has a descending hemline raised such a furor. Men denounce the midi as a threat to the golden days of mini ogling; women insist that it will make them look old, or ugly, or dumpy, or sawed-off—or all of these; and the fashion industry has been deeply split by its advent. The battle rages in millions of American homes, from the White House to the Chicago split-level whose car boasts a bumper sticker that proclaims: “Mini yes, Midi no!” “I feel this is a graceful length for me,” says Pat Nixon. Says her daughter, Julie Eisenhower: “I think most midis are ugly, dowdy.” Bill Fine, president of Bonwit Teller, thinks—one might say hopes—that “the longer lengths have manners, more style. Perhaps it has something to do with moral awareness.” A protest signed by 335 customers of the Sanger-Harris store in Dallas reads: “We object strongly to being suppressed into buying the midi exclusively. We like looking feminine and intend staying that way, even if it means shopping elsewhere.” Ordinarily, fashion designers are at the center of arguments over new styles. In the case of the midi, however, the dominant force is a publisher, the press lord of a tiny trade-journal fiefdom that churns out eight publications that few Americans have ever heard of—except for one. He is John Burr Fairchild, 43, the head of Fairchild Publications and the boss of Women’s Wear Daily, the terror tabloid of the fashion world. Fairchild is a puzzling study of opposites. Though the columns of WWD are filled with the social doings of what he calls the “Beautiful People,” he resolutely shuns their company and their entertainments. Though he makes his living following fashion, he insists that it cannot be taken seriously. “Fashion is like food,” he says, “good to taste, good to feel, good to see. Nothing more.” At the same time, Fairchild is obviously a man who savors power. And this year he is putting his power to the test. He did not guess that hems would dive this year; he decided. He has decreed 1970 the year of the midi. What’s Up and What’s In The weapon he is using to enforce his decree is Women’s Wear Daily, and it is a weapon of extraordinary strength. Once a strictly trade journal unknown outside the industry, it has been converted under Fairchild’s guidance into a lively, gossipy and bitchy newspaper of manners, trends and scandal. Though its circulation of 85,000 is far below that of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar , it is clearly the most powerful and influential fashion journal in the U.S. It has become must reading for anyone connected with the fashion business, for journalists in search of story tips, and for members of the social set who want to know what’s Up and what’s In. “Women’s Wear Daily is a force,” says Muriel Sinclair, fashion director for Joseph Magnin in San Francisco. “To ignore it, you’d have to be able to ignore what’s going on in fashion around the world.” Georgia Young, manager of Erlebacher in Washington, admits that
