Mainbocher—The Most Important American Designer You’ve Never Heard Of—Is Getting His Due in Chicago Inline
Photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue, June 19611/15“Main Bocher and five new Mainbochers, from left to right: [on Sunny Harnett] silk surah morning glories—pink and fuchsia on black, one of the few long dresses Mainbocher showed this season. This has his famous bias cut, a cowboy fling of scarf trickling off the shoulders. At Main Bocher’s, left, one of those short evening dresses that look almost too fragile to breathe on—embroidered white organdy. Over [Isabelle Albonico’s] arm, a short red faille coat. The coat half-hidden by this one [on Anne St. Marie] is fitted white cotton, with a dotty pink-and-white lining. The other dots—mauve on white—belong to one of the famous Mainbocher suit blouses, and account for much of the charm of the mauve jersey suit in the foreground [on Dorothy McGowan]. Finally, a cashmere dress with its own flick of jacket in white and yellow checks. The coiffures by Kenneth of Lily Daché.”
Illustrated by Douglas Pollard, Vogue, March 19312/15Douglas Pollard, who illustrated Mainbocher’s draped blouse and gloves here, was the designer’s partner in life and work.
Photographed by Toni Von Horn, Vogue, June 19313/15Left, “Folds of heavy geranium-red crepe fall into interesting lines in this Mainbocher dress with circular fullness. The scarf worn at the high neck gives a new evening chic.”
Photographed by George Hoyningen-Huene, Vogue, September 19334/15Toto Koopman
“All the attention goes to the neck, with a hundred ways to accent its importance. Mainbocher adds a jabot of crinkly pleated white chiffon to a little guimpe that mounds about the throat of a black wool dress, ‘412,’ garnished by a pleated bertha of crinkly black satin ribbon. The black antelope bag is from Germaine Guérin; the Mainbocher hat is of black felt.”
Illustrated by Rene Bouet-Willaumez, Vogue, November 19335/15Diana Vreeland in Mainbocher
Diana Vreeland posing in a Mainbocher top-coat, black and white velvet scarf and feathered hat. *** Local Caption *** Diana Vreeland;
Illustrated by Eric, Vogue, January 19346/15“The lady Erickson drawn for the cover of this issue is wearing Mainbocher’s white fringed cape from Bonwit Teller—a cape that crystallizes our change of heart about shoulders. Almost overnight, sloping shoulders have routed square ones from our midst. Notice, too, her bulky jewels, designed by Herz, of sapphire and chalcedony.”
Photographed by André Durst, Vogue, July 19377/15“The Princess Karam of Kapurthala, back in Paris with a beautiful wardrobe of Mainbocher clothes—among them, this bird-and-flower-printed taffeta dress and boa of cut-out taffeta flowers.”
Photographed by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, March 19388/15“Mainbocher’s charmer in black and white—a frothy white net bodice above a tiered skirt of black net—and, to ward off an errant breeze, an excuse for a shawl. Mauboussin jewels.”
Photographed by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, September 19399/15“Paris puts you back in laced corsets. . . . Detolle made the extreme, back-lacing corset to bind you in for the Velasquez silhouette.”
Photographed by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, October 194210/15“Civilian uniform advisor to the Waves, Mrs. Forrestal asked Mainbocher, one of the country’s most famous designers, to work out the Wave uniform master design. (Both were once Vogue editors.) Here, Mrs. Forrestal, who is not a Wave, wears the officer’s outfit, workmanlike, practical, and distinguished.”
Photographed by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, May 194711/15“It is a given fact that the Duchess of Windsor has a rare personal talent for clothes. She always dresses to suit her own personality rather than a fancy of a time. Her skill is with the modern, the precise, the understated. She is photographed here in [an] evening dress she chose from Mainbocher’s equally exact, contemporary, un-trifled collectsion. . . . she wears a hooped, spreading, blue taffeta dress with no hint of period piece, no distraction from line, volume of skirt.”
Photographed by Donald Honeyman, Vogue, July 194712/15“Mrs. John C. Wilson, photographed in Paris in [one] of the sari dresses, which Mainbocher made for her in New York. A black sheath wound at the hips in a turban drapery made of cuttings of several saris.”
Photographed by Cecil Beaton, Vogue, March 195113/15“Mrs. Guest, beautiful and blonde, has a direct manner, a small trim figure, and water lily coloring, and prefers clothes that are youthful and simple in design. She lives part of the year in New York; was photographed, here, at the Villa Artemis, the house of her mother-in-law, Mrs. Frederick Guest, in a pale blue wool Mainbocher suit.”
Photographed by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, November 196414/15Mrs. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt
“Mainbocher’s heavy cream silk crepe is poured in one blinding spill of light, past the high crossed bodice, the high waist—each detail soft as a whisper and as compelling. Van Cleef & Arpels jewels. Coiffure by Pierre of the House of Revlon. Fur rugs: Georges Kaplan, John Veset; Luten, Clarey, Stern.”
Photographed by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, April 196615/15Gloria Vanderbilt
“Mrs. Cooper in the long, fluent, heavy apricot crepe that she chose for herself—Mainbocher’s cowled, bias-top dress, dipped low front and back, with a high waist from which the full skirt falls slim as a stream. With this, she likes a necklace of pink and amethyst stones. . . . wears it, here, in the living room of her house in town, a room filled with pale damask, old needlepoint, and family snapshots everywhere.”
