Manhattan at Mid-Century

by Myrna Katz Frommer

  Another time, I wanted to do a piece on this black actor who was performing in whiteface. “Why is it we never feature any of the black personalities?” I asked Mrs. Snow.

  She said, “Dorothy, you write a note to Fifty-seventh Street and ask them if you can do it.” I got a long memo back saying the Hearst organization has no restrictions on anybody at all. In fact, the memo went on to say, the front page of the Journal American yesterday had a picture of little black children playing on the streets of Harlem. “Mrs. Snow, they say it’s fine,” I told her.

  “Dorothy, are you stupid?” she said. “Can’t you read between the lines?”

  Around 1957, Carmel Snow was fired. The Hearst people didn’t like all the literature, all the features she brought in. They got a niece of Mrs. Snow’s who’d been an editor at Good Housekeeping to replace her.

  They called her over to 57th Street to give her the news. When she came back to the office, Diana Vreeland said, “Tell me this, did they ever mention me as a successor?” Mrs. Snow said, “Your name was never mentioned.”

  “Who cares if I’m editor of Harper’s Bazaar?” Mrs. Snow said. “I don’t.” But she did. It was her life.

  She died a few years later. There is no doubt that the firing led to her death. Her funeral filled St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Every one of the Jewish garment manufacturers who depended on Mrs. Snow to tell them what was coming in from Europe so they would know what was going to be fashionable—they all showed up. Her husband, who was in his eighties, was escorted by their four children. In less than six months, he married one of his hunting companions, a hardy-looking woman with dyed black hair. Mrs. Snow’s sister was quite put out. “I do think Palen could have waited a little longer,” she said.

  Diana Vreeland went off to Vogue and was there for ten years before she went on to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to take charge of costumes.

  Alexei Brodovitch, who was fired at the same time as Mrs. Snow, got drunk, ultimately lost his mind. I went to see him afterwards at Riker’s Island in a kind of sanatorium.

  But I will never forget the pair of them, Alexei Brodovitch and Carmel Snow, inspired and ruthless partners who illuminated publishing history.

  PAULINE TRIGÈRE: Before the war, Paris was the capital of couture. On Seventh Avenue, they were making clothes to wear, to be warm. The few designers, if I can call them that, had nothing to do with fashion, really. But during the war, women couldn’t go to Europe, and so the few people who were making couture became famous. And in those years after the war, we discovered that we had talent right here. We learned we were almost as good, or as good, or better than the Parisians. Seventh Avenue became great just at this moment, and New York began to become the capital of the world of fashion. It was a revolution.

  ELEANOR LAMBERT: Before the war, people in the garment industry feared that if war came, people would stop buying clothes, and so the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and the managers of dress businesses formed an organization to encourage women to buy dresses. They began an advertising campaign, but it proved to be rather banal, with messages like “Aren’t you ashamed that you don’t have a new dress?” Stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman protested that this campaign was wasted.

  “What do you think would work?” the organizers asked the store executives.

  “You ought to do it with suggestions through publicity.”

  I was asked to handle the job as publicist, and that was how the Dress Institute began. We organized spectacular fashion shows for charity and invited fashion editors from newspapers and magazines all over the country. Through these events, the names and the personalities of the fashion designers we showcased became known.

  The war did happen, and the French designers were wiped out for that period. American manufacturers, who had forced designers to copy French designs, had to let them do their own thing. It was during this time that the Dress Institute had the opportunity to convince the consumer of the worth of the American designers. By the time the war ended, they were recognized as the equal of the French.

  PAULINE TRIGÈRE: I came to New York from Paris in 1937 with my mother and brother, my husband and our two sons. I had a visitor’s visa for six weeks. I’ve stayed for more than sixty years.

  Soon after we arrived, my brother, husband, and I took one of those double-decker buses down Fifth Avenue. We got off at 57th Street, walked downtown until we came to Saks Fifth Avenue, and walked back up to 57th Street. I fell in love with the city. “I’m not going anywhere. I want to stay,” I told my husband.

  “You’re crazy,” he said. But that was the beginning.

  My mother was a dressmaker and my father had been a tailor so I knew how to make clothes. I decided I could do something on my own, but my husband wanted me to be a hausfrau. So we separated. The question that’s often asked of me is, “Did you want to become a designer?”

  I say, “No. I had to feed two kids.”

  My mother took care of my small children, and I got a job at Hattie Carnegie as assistant to a designer named Travis Banton. He sketched, and I made his muslins. He got paid three hundred dollars a week, I got paid sixty-five. He dressed Garbo and all those people; he was eating lunch at the Colony and would come back to work completely drunk.

  Then came the seventh of December, 1941. A week later, Hattie’s brother came in and said, “We’re closing the business.”

  I took over half of the loft, and that’s where I started in 1942, together with my brother, Robert. The rent was fifty dollars a month. When the other half of the loft—which had been occupied by Carnegie’s embroiderer—became available, I took it over too. Now the rent was one hundred dollars. I had nothing, no money, no nothing. I pawned the two diamond clips my husband had given me when my sons were born.

  We made eleven dresses out of wool crepe. I was my own model and my own cutter. The dresses were ready in March, with a wholesale price of about forty dollars. My brother put them in a suitcase and went by bus to stores all over the country.

  My first customers were Nan Duskin in Philadelphia, Becky Blum in Chicago, Elizabeth Quinlan in Minneapolis, Amelia Gray in Los Angeles, and Martha Phillips in New York. These were all women who owned their firms; they gave their breath to their business. They knew their customers: if they are married, if they go dancing, if they have careers. Then we started selling to Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman, also B. Altman, Lord & Taylor, Bonwit Teller.

  ELEANOR LAMBERT: I had proposed to Coty—the French perfume company, which was one of my clients—that it sponsor a fashion award honoring American fashion. But the idea was turned down. Then Coty added some American executives, and Grover Whelan, who had worked in the administration of New York City mayor John Hylan, became its head. We connected.

  “You know we’re having a terrible time at Coty,” he told me. “It’s gone down so much from the days when it was the best perfume company in the world, cheapening, cheapening, cheapening. Our fragrances, which had been so eminent, are being sold in drugstores. What can we do that shows we belong in fashion?”

  I thought of my original idea and told Mr. Whelan about it. “This is exactly what I mean,” he said.

  The first Coty American Fashion Critics Awards ceremony was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 22, 1943. We had a big by-invitation-only audience and a jury of fashion editors. The winner that year was Norman Norell; Lily Dache and John Fredericks won awards for hat design.

  PAULINE TRIGÈRE: In 1949, I got my first Coty Award. I was the youngest one to win. In 1952, I won my second Coty. That was the same year that we moved to the beautiful, fabulous building—550 Seventh Avenue. Later on, Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, Donna Karan would all be in this building.

  My brother and I were at 37 West 57th when we heard there was a terrific place available in 550 Seventh Avenue. In those days, you had to buy the lease. “Robert, let’s not go,” I said. “We haven’t any money.”

  But we took the s
ubway to 42nd Street, and we walked over to Seventh Avenue and 40th, and I saw that showroom, big, nice, with a platform like a stage. The rent was about four times what we were paying. And we had to pay twenty-one thousand dollars to the man to get the key. That night I couldn’t sleep. Then I decided, young as we were, we should take it. I didn’t know how we would pay the rent, but I knew we would.

  The showroom and the designing room had air conditioning. The factory in the back had none. After a few months, the summer comes, and I see the people working at the machines with the sweat coming down on my clothes. We put in air conditioning. That August, one of the union representatives comes in. “You know you haven’t paid the contractors.”

  “I know, I know. I have no money.”

  “Why don’t you go to a bank and borrow some money.”

  “How?”

  “There’s a new bank on the corner at Thirty-ninth. They’re only open a month, and they’re looking for customers.”

  “A bank is looking for customers?” I said. I mean, I was so stupidly ignorant. “I’ll call the guy and make an appointment.”

  Soon after, a tall guy came into our showroom. “My name is Mr. McCarthy, Miss Trigère.” He was the vice president of the bank. “Can I see the place?”

  “It’s nice and clean,” I said. “We just moved in.”

  He looked all around, and then he said, “Do you have a statement?”

  “A what? No, my brother takes care of that.”

  “Well, can you get one?”

  “He’s in San Francisco. I’ll call him.”

  I walked him to the elevator, and he said, “It was nice meeting you, Miss Trigère. We’ll see you next week with the statement. By the way, you really run a tight ship.”

  What does he mean by that? I wondered. It was such a peculiar expression.

  The next week, I walked over to the bank with the statement. It was a very hot day. I was wearing a cute little beige suit and high heels, and as I crossed the street, my heels sank into the tar.

  I go into the bank. Mr. McCarthy interrogates me like I’m in front of a judge. I answer the best I can. Finally he says to me “How much money do you think you need?”

  “I don’t know. Fifty thousand dollars?”

  He said, “You’ll never make it with fifty thousand. We’ll give you seventy-five thousand.”

  I started to cry. It was my first loan. When I repaid it, he came to me and said, “Don’t you need any more money? We can lend it to you.” This bank became Marine Midland Bank, and Mr. McCarthy became a good business associate until he retired. I still get Christmas cards from him.

  I always made clothes that women could wear at any time, classical things. I never made clothes to sweep the floor or show the pupik (navel). I only bought fabric that was the best and produced clothes made by the best workers I could get. I don’t sketch. I drape and cut directly on the model with big scissors.

  Fabric is my dictator. I would go to Paris every year to buy fabric, not to see the shows. We used to have our own shows—four, sometimes five a year. We could sit 150 people in my showroom by opening two doors. There used to be what we called market week when buyers from Chicago, San Francisco, Palm Beach would all come at the same time. They had a chance to see not only Trigère but all the New York designers. They would be invited, come to the showroom, sit down. I never was ready until the last minute, having to put a button on someplace. The models would come in holding a number, walk back and forth. Then the buyers would make appointments. That was it.

  Two or three days later, the buyers would come back and see the racks: the evening clothes, the daytime clothes. We would have a model show the clothes again. Each buyer came to see the collection and buy directly.

  In 1956, I put an ad for a model in the New York Times. About twenty women responded. One of them was black. I liked her style, I needed her, and I took her on. Well, it turned out I was the first one to engage a black model on Seventh Avenue. It was a revolution. A customer from Memphis told my brother, “I’m not going to buy any clothes modeled by a black.”

  “You don’t have to,” he said, and he escorted her out.

  My brother always traveled around with the collection, but then somebody asked me to make a personal appearance. So I began traveling, and I learned Chicago was one customer, Atlanta was another one, Los Angeles yet another. When I went to Palm Beach for the first time and saw the sky—that was something. You think pink, pale green, not dark brown and black.

  I got to know the Neiman Marcus brothers in Dallas. I became very friendly with Mr. Goodman of Bergdorf Goodman. When I say friendly, I mean I had him at my table when I gave dinner parties. I also became a very good friend of Adam Gimbel, who owned Saks Fifth Avenue. Adam loved to speak French, and he adored me. Sophie, who became his wife, made all those fabulous clothes.

  HELEN O’HAGAN: Before the war, Sophie used to go to Paris and buy couture from designers. Saks would duplicate them, made-to-order. But once the war came, Sophie began designing herself. By the time the war was over, she was confident enough to continue her own work. She was the first American designer to appear on the cover of Time magazine because she went against Christian Dior’s “New Look,” even though she entertained him in her home.

  PAULINE TRIGÈRE: I was not at all influenced by the “New Look.” I continued doing the same thing. But there was a mood, some kind of feeling in the air when Dior started making the full skirts. New York copied the Dior skirt, but they made it half the size.

  For a while, some houses depended on what they saw in Paris. They viewed the collections and bought two, three pieces. But then it stopped. The mood changed. You don’t go to Paris to copy. Paris comes to New York to copy the sportswear.

  HELEN O’HAGAN: I came to New York from Charleston, South Carolina, in 1955, looking for a job as a photographer. I was visiting a friend of my father’s who had a home in Sands Point and was renting a boathouse on her property to Slim Aarons, a photographer who worked for Town and Country. I called him. “Let me think about it,” he said. But when I called him back, he said, “I have just the job for you. I just spoke with the Countess DeMun, who does publicity for Saks. She’s desperate for someone.” Grace DeMun interviewed me in Sophie Gimbel’s couture salon, and I was hired on the spot as press assistant for a salary of sixty-five dollars a week.

  Saks Fifth Avenue was one of the most elegant stores one could imagine. All the rooms were like beautiful drawing rooms in Europe. The walls of Sophie’s salon had been painted by a Frenchman famous for painting interiors who mixed a special shade of blue he called Sophie-Blue. The salon had lovely sofas, French armchairs, and black lacquered coffee tables. And it was there, at 2:30 every afternoon, that Sophie showed to a clientele that included Mary Benny, the wife of Jack Benny; Marlene Dietrich; Estee Lauder; the Annenbergs; and Claudette Colbert. She had four models and two dressers who worked full-time, and workrooms that took up half of the tenth floor of Saks. In addition to the custom-made, Sophie did a ready-to-wear collection that was sold to other stores with the label “Sophie of Saks Fifth Avenue.”

  Saks was unique in that we had so many designers on the premises. There was Stephen Erklin, who did evening wear, and Miss Isabelle, who made custom sweaters with little diamond openings that showed the pattern of the dress they were worn over.

  There was also Tatiana du Plessix Liberman, the wife of Alexander Liberman, editorial director for Condé Naste. Tatiana was a great friend of Sophie’s and designed custom hats for her. We even had two children’s-wear designers.

  In those days, even in the ready-to-wear department, most of the clothes were kept in a back stockroom. The salons had tea stands and beautiful furniture. Women would come in, and the sales ladies would go in the back and bring out clothes to show them. It was not rack-city at all.

  The designers would ship their garments to Saks without a label because you were not selling a particular designer, you were selling Saks Fifth Avenue. The “Saks Fi
fth Avenue” label was sewn on the side. Once I received a letter from a young ensign. He saved all his money to buy his wife a dress from Saks Fifth Avenue. At Christmas, he gave her this beautiful Saks box. She opened it, and there was a beautiful Saks dress, but no label.

  I wrote back, “I’m sure you’ll find the label sewn in the inseam. However, I will be more than happy to be sure you have enough labels.” I sent him a box. She must have put one in every garment she owned.

  Although he did not let them put their labels in the garments until the late sixties, Adam Gimbel was not against designers. Fifty percent of our garments came from designers in the garment center. Adam started out as Saks vice president when it opened in 1924. Less than a year after the store opened, Horace Saks, who was president, died, and Adam took over. He was a renaissance man, spoke French and German, was a great sportsman, and read three books a week, always one in a different language. And he had an eye like no one else. (He actually had only one eye; the other had been lost when he was a child.)

  When Adam came into the store in the morning, he’d leave his coat and hat in the men’s hat department on the first floor. At night, he’d walk down from his office on the eighth floor, stopping to check every floor on his way down. He prided himself on having the most beautiful, elegant store. “America’s largest specialty store” was what he called it. Adam didn’t want to hear about Saks 34th, which was a real cheap department store and had no relationship to Saks Fifth Avenue. Neither did Gimbel’s, which was run by his cousin Bruce Gimbel, who also trained at Saks.

  A few years after I arrived, Grace DeMun was let go. I went up to Sophie and said, “I don’t know what to do. Grace wants me to leave with her.”

  She said, “You wait right here.” She called Adam. I was in the fitting room, and I could see his feet going past. Then I heard him say, “You tell Helen I’m going to give her six months, and if she does the job, it’s hers. She won’t get an increase; she’ll have to work for it.”

  And I did. I directed all the public relations; I produced and directed every fashion show. And when we started new stores in places like Chicago, Atlanta, Palo Alto, it was my job to go out in the market, meet the community, and open the store. I would have breakfast meetings with women—there weren’t many working women in those days. A Saks Fifth Avenue in their city was so exciting to them. “Oh, we’re going to get a little piece of New York,” they’d say.