The Great Fashion Designers (23 page)

The Vietnam War during the 1960s contributed to a growing revolutionary sensibility among disadvantaged minorities such as America's black population, homosexuals, women and the politicised young, resulting in riots in Paris (
les événements du mai
1968), violent demonstrations in London's Grosvenor Square and on American university campuses, and leftist terrorist groups in Europe and the United States. Young designers, most of them coming from Britain's art schools rather than the Chambre Syndicale school in Paris, took inspiration from street styles and modern art movements primarily pop art and graphic op art. In 1965
Yves Saint Laurent
, who was to dominate the two decades, presented his Mondrian collection. He was also to pay homage to Poliakoff, Braque, Matisse, van Gogh, Renoir, Lichtenstein and Warhol.

The early 1970s saw the downturn of the economic cycle, high unemployment, power cuts, strikes—and hippies. The highly politicised impetus of the 1960s gave way to a spiritual, often drug-fuelled altruism—turn on, tune in and drop out—and fashion became romantic, retro and eclectic, taking inspiration from other times and other places. In Paris
Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Issey Miyake
and
Kenzo
produced youthful collections culminating in the Big Look. In London Ossie Clark, Bill Gibb, Zandra Rhodes and Laura Ashley created romantic clothes just this side of fancy dress while Vivienne Westwood, equally historicist, was taking a more iconoclastic approach. The seeds of the Italian fashion industry were being laid at this time: Rosita and Tai Missoni,
Giorgio Armani
, Mariuccia Mandelli of Krizia and Walter Albini began to show in Milan while a small cadre of couturiers, including
Valentino
, survived beyond Rome of the dolce vita.

In America a design dynasty of minimalists was developing in McCardell's footsteps;
Roy Halston, Geoffrey Beene
and Bill Blass were followed by
Calvin Klein. Ralph Lauren
was getting his start with simple classics, and Donna Karan was doing her apprenticeship in designer sportswear at Anne Klein. A misty-eyed romanticism has never since quite disappeared from fashion; it is rarely done as beautifully as by John Galliano, but it was never again to be the dominant mode.

When American designer Norman Norell died in 1972, shortly after a retrospective show of his life's work had opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City,
The New York Times's
obituary headline ran, ‘Made 7th Avenue the rival of Paris.' Such was the esteem in which Norell was held in America. Although the headline was stretching the truth in pure creative terms (the dominance of Paris continues to this day), it was certainly true that Norman Norell had turned the ready-to-wear industry of New York, focused on Seventh Avenue, into the heart of American fashion. He developed a wardrobe that suited the American lifestyle, with its emphasis on day-to-evening dressing and wearable, unpretentious clothes. For evening, he could also produce his own share of show-stoppers: sequin-covered sheath dresses were among his most celebrated creations.

By designer standards, Norell's life was uneventful, driven by the routines of his business. Most days, he worked from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. out of his studio on the tenth floor of 550 Seventh Avenue and lunched at Schraft's on 43rd (always scrambled egg and crisp bacon). He researched his collection by leafing through fashion magazines in the New York Public Library. The design process began with the fabrics, usually ordered from Europe, and then his ideas were translated into rough sketches. Toiles were rarely used: Norell just got on with it in his no-nonsense style. He shunned the celebrity circuit, preferring to hang out with his friends and colleagues at Schraft's. Norell was equally embarrassed by overambitious claims for the significance of fashion. ‘Arty talk about haute couture gives me a swift pain,' he said in 1962. In an interview towards the end of his life, he commented: ‘I would rather see someone threadbare in something good than cheesy in the latest fashion.'

He was born Norman David Levinson in Noblesville, Indiana, to Harry and Nettie Levinson. Harry, who ran a men's clothing store, opened a men's hat store in Indianapolis where everything was priced at $2. This was such a success that the family moved to Indianapolis when Norman was five. He was a thin little boy with a hot temper, he later recalled. At the age of nineteen, fashion design was his chosen subject of study, but there was no such course so he studied illustration in New York at Parsons, a school with which he retained a lifelong connection. He also chose to contract his name, ditching the workaday Levinson in favour of Norell. He explained: ‘Nor for Norman, L for Levinson, with another L added for looks.'

Norell took his first steps as a designer in 1922 in the field of costume design, working at the Astoria Studio of Paramount Pictures. The stars for whom he designed included Gloria Swanson in
Zaza
and Rudolph Valentino in
The Sainted Devil
. The studio closed shortly afterwards and Norell worked on some Broadway musicals before joining Charles Armour, a dress manufacturer, who sent him to Europe for the first time. The defining moment of his career came in 1928, when he joined Hattie Carnegie. A fierce perfectionist, Carnegie was brilliant in her own way, although the process was unoriginal—visiting the couturiers in Paris, buying pieces, pulling them apart back in New York to understand how they were designed, and turning them into more affordable clothes for their American clients. This was the way the American fashion industry worked, founded on the creative insecurity
of the American industry and the dominance, often laced with arrogance, of the Paris-based couturiers. The regular visits to Paris were an extraordinary training ground for Norell, an opportunity to understand the secrets of the great European couturiers and develop a profound technical knowledge of the process of creating great fashion. Over twelve years, he developed his skills and his eye, benefiting from the formidable tutelage of Carnegie. He put it simply: ‘I learned everything I knew from her.'

Carnegie never allowed Norell to take any credit. He worked for more than a decade in ‘complete anonymity', as one Vogue editor put it. A shy and gentle man, this did not appear to put him out: the clash with Carnegie that led to his departure in 1940 was creative rather than ambition driven. They had a row over a dress worn by Gertrude Lawrence in
Lady in the Dark
on Broadway (he thought it perfect; she wanted it toned down). His decision to go solo came at a moment when the American fashion industry was poised to come of age—cut off from the influences of Paris during wartime and ready to make its own mark. Anthony Traina, a manufacturer best known for larger sizes, contacted him. ‘He offered me a larger salary if my name were not used,' recalled Norell. ‘A smaller amount if it were.' Thus Traina-Norell was created. From the beginning, it was conceived as a full collection rather than a series of pieces, which tended to be the way on Seventh Avenue. The principles of the Paris couture, founded on precision of fit, were now applied to ready-to-wear. Norell was therefore an important bridge between couture and ready-to-wear. Bettina Ballard, an influential editor at
Vogue
with a razor-sharp eye, recalled in her autobiography: ‘I loved Norman's clothes. They had the same single-mindedness as Balenciaga's or Chanel's, and the same fanatical attention to quality … I bought as many as I could afford.'

He drew inspiration from the 1920s, a favourite decade for him, including silk jersey dresses and long wool evening dresses in his first collection. Norell had a sure sense of timing, a key ingredient of any designer's success. A full-length sweater dress, also shown in 1941, was another star piece. His friend, the fashion editor Bernadine Morris, wrote later: ‘What Norman Norell had accomplished in that first collection was to give American fashion—producers and wearers alike—a freedom from dependence on foreign sources of inspiration. The American industry felt it could set its own directions, its own styles.' Norell went on to play a dominant role in American fashion for three decades. As early as 1943, his achievement was recognized with the first Coty American Fashion Critics Award, recognising the quality of his chemise dresses, sequined cocktail dresses and fur-lined coats. An invitation to a Norell show was a prized ticket: the collection was shown at 9 p.m. (the dress code was black-tie) right through until 1969, when the time was shifted to 5 p.m.

No doubt drawing on his twelve years of visiting Paris, Norell had an instinctive feel for trends and very rarely got it wrong. In 1942, he introduced the no-waistline chemise or shirt dress, not seen since the 1920s, which became a staple of his collections. When he was once asked to sum up his major contribution to fashion, Norell chose to focus on a detail: simple, high round necklines. ‘I hated necklines. I always thought they made women look older. So I started making simple Peter Pan collars or no collars at all. Just a plain round neckline, no crap on it … I do think it changed the look of clothes.' Another recurring theme was nautical, inspired by a childhood sailor suit he had worn and introduced as early as 1933 at Hattie Carnegie. Indeed, many of his ideas, according to Bernadine Morris, had their origin in the styles he bought in Paris for Carnegie in the 1930s. The influence of menswear, recalling his own father's roots in menswear retailing, also percolated through his work, such as in the creation of a sleeveless jacket over a bowed blouse and slim wool skirt.

Norell's own personal style was neat and precise. He believed day wear should be simple with the razzmatazz saved for evening, an attitude that is still at the heart of the New York way of dressing. During the 1950s, however, he adapted to changing tastes, creating shirtwaist dresses with full skirts in silk and lace and mixing tweed jackets with satin collars with satin ball gowns. Norell's sequined dresses were much admired, dubbed mermaid dresses for their slithery, sensual appeal. In 1960, Anthony Traina was obliged through ill health to step down, allowing Norell to take over the business entirely, with some financial backing. Traina-Norell
became Norman Norell, and he created an immediate sensation with a culotte-skirted wool flannel day suit in his very first solo collection. Eventually, he bought out his backers too, buoyed by the success of a fragrance launched with Revlon. Norell was copied, naturally. But this time the flow was back across the Atlantic: Paris-based companies picked up many of his designs, such as his culotte suit and his gored ice-skating skirt. With great magnanimity, Norell produced working sketches of the culotte suit free of charge to the trade with the intention of ensuring that his design would be copied properly—an extraordinary gesture that won him huge goodwill on Seventh Avenue and beyond.

Through the 1960s, Norell remained a vibrant force in American fashion, often ahead of the pack. He designed the first evening jumpsuit in 1961, created trouser suits for 1963, and set the pace again by bringing back belts in 1966, heralding the return of emphasis on the waistline. He made news too, sending back his Coty Hall of Fame award in 1963 in protest at an award for the provocative Rudi Gernreich. There were mistakes: his culottes of 1960 were judged too early for the market. American trade newspaper
Women's Wear Daily
, then entering its golden age under the dynamic editorship of John Fairchild, also chose to give him the cold shoulder for a period. But by then Norell had attained the status of eminence grise. As the founder and first president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, he can rightly be acclaimed as the father of the country's fashion industry. Sadly, the Metropolitan Museum's retrospective of 1972 was never seen by Norell. He suffered a stroke only a day before the opening and died ten days later. The house continued for a further five years with designer Gustave Tassell. In 2004, Patrick Michael Hughes, a lecturer at Parsons, attempted to revive the label.

Norell always downplayed his approach to design. He could make it sound very easy, but this was founded on decades of study and reflection. ‘I believe in thinking out what the next logical and natural trend in fashion will be,' he said in 1952. ‘Once I have decided, the rest is easy. I simply take the most straightforward approach to it, without any extra, fancy trimmings. I don't like over-designed anything.'

Further reading:
Bernadine Morris, who was fashion editor of
The New York Times
and a friend of Norell, summarised his career in
American Fashion: The Life and Lines of Adrian, Mainbocher, McCardell, Norell, and Trigére
(1975), edited by Sarah Tomerlin Lee. Norell also features in Caroline Rennolds Milbank's
New York Fashion: The Evolution of American Style
(1989).