Chapter 10 ■ The Promised Land
“It was Olga’s special attention to detail that made her garments stand out,” Jan Erteszek would later claim. This was especially true on one auspicious day in Los Angeles, in the late spring of 1942.
Olga and Jan waited for a trolley at the corner of Beverly and Third, when Olga nudged my father as he looked off into some corner of their new world. Perhaps he’d spotted the First Congregational Church on Sixth and Commonwealth, the one he and my mother would join, with its incongruous, imposing Gothic architecture reminiscent of Krakow. Or perhaps he was remembering some dark image from the Soviet occupation, the German terror, or thinking of his family back in Poland.
“Johnny, look over there,” Olga pointed out a well-dressed lady who stood ready to enter the streetcar. Both would have appreciated the woman’s careful outfit: belted, white linen sheath, a row of alabaster buttons marching up the back of her dress. The lady wore a pair of stylish red pumps, and a white-gloved hand clutched a matching red purse.
“Look at her legs!” Olga whispered in Polish as the lady high-stepped onto the platform. Her mid-calf-length skirt hiked up, revealing a rope of mud-brown stockings rolled down just under her knee. It was a reminder to Olga that the war continued, though it was almost unimaginable in the beautiful safe haven of Southern California. Still, the evidence of wartime sacrifices showed up on the legs of women like this. Silk was unavailable, being more valuable for parachutes, and its scarcity was increased by poor American-Asian relations.
Olga and Jan entered the car last before it eased its way toward Hoover Boulevard. Olga found an empty bench and slid next to the window, adjusting her blue knit skirt that just brushed her mid-calf. She patted the spare bench for Johnny to be seated and he did with care.
“Did you see her stockings? Like a piece of sausage,” Olga said in Polish. She had noticed this American custom before: well-dressed ladies in the newest fashions revealing rolled-down stockings as they climbed onto trolley platforms or scurried up escalators.
Olga thought the sight “vulgar.” Maybe Polish peasants would roll their hose below their knees, but well-dressed modern women?
The First Lady of Underfashions is a nonfiction saga-like memoir written by Christina Erteszek and includes excerpts from her parents' unpublished memoirs. It is a complex, layered, and nuanced story that bridges the violence of war, the innovation of thought, the singularity of religion, the quest for identity, and the intrigues and intricacies of family life. Jan and Olga escape from World War II Europe and arrive in the US with just a few dollars. They turn their paltry savings into a multi-million-dollar fashion business. Olga becomes a leading patent holder of female lingerie, a trendsetter in the industry, and is widely known for her innovative business tactics. But as this husband-and-wife team think of retiring, they decide to merge with another fashion company, which proves to be a fatal move when a loophole in the agreement allows for a hostile takeover. This is also a story of a daughter's need to find herself. Along her path to self-discovery, she discovers her parents have many secrets, some of which will never be revealed.
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