20th Century Pioneer Lingerie Designers

Elsa Schiaparelli,

born Sept. 10, 1890, Rome, Italy
died Nov. 13, 1973, Paris, Fr.

Italian-born French dress designer whose use of accessories and dramatic colours enlivened the fashion scene for 40 years. She introduced the padded shoulder in 1932; designed fur bed jackets and rhinestone-trimmed lingerie in the 1940s; and in the 1950s popularized “shortie” coats in vivid reds, golds, and chartreuses.

Elsa Schiaparelli worked in the United States as a film-script writer and translator for an importing firm. In the late 1920s she settled in Paris, dabbled in free-lance writing and sculpture, and soon opened her first small couturier shop. By 1935 she was a leader in haute couture and was quickly expanding into jewelry, perfume, cosmetics, lingerie, and swimsuits. Her designs were noted for combining eccentricity with simplicity and a trim neatness with flamboyant colour. In 1947 Schiaparelli’s new colour, “shocking pink,” was the sensation of the fashion world. Her “ice blue” achieved almost the same popularity, as did her furs dyed in unusual shades of colour.

She opened a branch in New York City in 1949 to mass-produce suits, dresses, and coats of her design. Along with designer Christian Dior, she was instrumental in the worldwide commercialization of Parisian fashion.

Schiaparelli, Elsa. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved September 20, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9066115
Lilly Dache

born c. 1904, Beigles, France
died Dec. 31, 1989, Louvecienne

French-born milliner who established a flourishing hat business in the United States with made-to-order creations.

Daché left school at the age of 14 and was apprenticed to her aunt, a milliner in Bordeaux, and later to the famous milliner Caroline Reboux of Paris. In 1924 Daché moved to New York City, where she worked as a salesclerk at Macy’s department store and then at a small milliner’s shop until she saved enough money to buy out her employer. Some of her stunning innovations included the cloche hat, the turban, hats woven of kitchen twine, glass and lucite-bedecked bonnets, and the swagger hat associated with actress Marlene Dietrich. Daché eventually expanded her operation to include dresses, lingerie, jewelry, and cosmetics. In 1968 she retired when her husband, Jean Despres, a cosmetics executive at Coty Inc., also retired.

Daché, Lilly.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 20 Sept. 2007 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9000724>.

Mary Quant

Married name Mrs. A. Plunket Greene born Feb. 11, 1934, London, Eng.

English dress designer of youth-oriented fashions, responsible in the 1960s for the “Chelsea look” of England and the widespread popularity of the miniskirt and “hot pants.”

Quant attended Goldsmith’s College of Art, London, and spent two years designing hats for the Danish milliner Erik. In partnership with her husband and a friend, she opened a boutique called Bazaar, on the King’s Road in London in 1957. It was an immediate success, and within seven years the company had expanded throughout Europe and the United States and was mass-producing designs on a multimillion-dollar annual scale.

Quant’s designs reflected a shift in fashion from the establishment to youth as the source of inspiration. Her best-known fashions of the 1960s were similar in feeling to the outfits worn by little girls to dancing class—short pleated skirts, white anklets, and black-patent, ankle-strap shoes. In the early 1970s, Quant stopped manufacturing but continued to design clothing, furs, lingerie, household linens, and eyeglass frames. She also continued to direct the cosmetics business that she started in 1955.

Quant was named a member of the Order of the British Empire in 1966, and throughout the late 1960s she received several other awards for her achievements in fashion design. From 1973 to 1974 she held a retrospective exhibition of 1960s fashion at the LondonMuseum, and from 1976 to 1978 Quant worked on the advisory council for the Victoria and AlbertMuseum. Quant by Quant, an autobiography, was published in 196

Quant, Mary. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved September 20, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9062156
Marjorie Janko
Marjorie Janko was born on 12 May 1909 in London. She was educated in London, attending the Haverstock Central School and then Barrett Street School for Hairdressing. She subsequently worked freelance for British Celanese in London from 1927 to 1929. In 1929 British Celanese employed her on a permanent basis. She went on to found the company’s design department in London and design sections at other plants including Congleton, Spondon and Wrexham. She also set up the company’s showrooms, the first of which was at Hanover Square. She quickly shifted her own design expertise to designing lingerie, and some underwear for children and men. She worked under the name Miss Marjorie Marene, signing her work MM. During the Second World War, British Celanese temporarily relocated its headquarters in Nottingham. Marjorie Janko’s department was responsible for making military tents and garments which conformed to British Utility Standards.
Although she continued to be employed by British Celanese, and subsequently Courtaulds when it took over British Celanese, until her retirement in 1974 she also undertook commissions for other companies, including Marks and Spencer plc. During the 1940s and early 1950s she was a columnist for The Maker-up, writing articles on pattern laying and lingerie trends. She produced a history of lingerie, completed in 1951. Although the history had a publisher it never appeared. In the 1960s Marjorie lectured on the history and development of lingerie. She also conducted a number of surveys of the lingerie industry and analysed the differences between the stock of many large department stores. She travelled to shows worldwide in order to keep up with fashions.
Marjorie Janko became a Fellow of the Clothing Institute in 1950, a Member of the Lingerie Standards Committee of the British Standards Institute and a Member of the Council and Qualifications and Education Committee of the Clothing Institute.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/wid/ead/aad/aad-1998-14f.html