Chapter 11 ■ Made in America
Olga (holding shovel) and Jan Erteszek, April 1952 groundbreaking for Olga Company headquarters.
My parents’ growing business and my mother’s growing belly probably didn’t give her much time to think about dear friends and family she had to leave behind. As the stress mounted with Jan and Olga doing so many of the primary tasks themselves, they longed for a trusted associate who could catapult their business beyond its present state. Enter underwear salesman Palmer Edward Griggs, known to his friends as P.E. One day at Bullock’s, Griggs watched Irene Ross, who befriended my parents during the war on their escape route and now worked alongside them, present a collection of Olga garter belts to a Bullock’s buyer. He approached them discreetly.
“Excuse me, ladies, but may I introduce myself?” he removed his hat with a slight bow. He wore a linen three-piece suit and well-polished brown and tan spectator shoes. “I couldn’t help but notice these exquisite garter belts. I’m not familiar with that brand.”
He explained to Irene that he was a salesman for Trezur Corset Company, which produced heavy corsetry with steel stays and lacings. When he overheard that Irene was only helping Olga temporarily, he turned up at my parents’ company doorstep the following morning.
P.E. was hired as head of sales and within a week he brought in a new order for ten dozen garters a month. My mother’s memoir continues:
We were by now occupying the whole upper floor of the Beverly-Vermont office building. There were twelve connecting rooms with twenty operators and an army reject honest-to-goodness cutter who introduced us to the art of folding the fabric into layers and, having drawn the patterns on a paper sheet on top, slicing it like a layer cake with an electric blade. While I was busy sewing, designing and teaching new, inexperienced sewers, Johnny wore the many hats of office clerk, parking boy and deliveryman. I broke up laughing one day when I overheard him answering our only phone.
“Olga Corsetry Company.” His voice, thickly punctuated with a Polish accent, was very businesslike. When the caller requested to talk to someone in shipping, Johnny, without hesitation, rattled the receiver as though transferring, then answered again, “shipping department”—still unable to conceal his hard “r’s.”
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of Underfashions is a nonfiction saga-like memoir written by Christina Erteszek and includes excerpts from her parents' unpublished memoirs.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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