Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon

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Lucy Christiana, Lady Duff-Gordon
Lucile in 1919, photographed by Arnold Genthe
Born June 13, 1863
London, England
Died April 20, 1935 (aged 71)
Putney, London, England
Nationality Flag of the United Kingdom British
Labels Lucile Ltd

Lucy Christiana, Lady Duff Gordon (neé Sutherland, previously Wallace) (June 13, 1863 – April 20, 1935) was a leading fashion designer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, best known as "Lucile," her professional name. She opened branches of her London couture house in Paris, New York City and Chicago, dressing high society, the stage and early silent cinema. Lucy Duff Gordon is remembered as a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, and as the losing party in the precedent-setting 1917 contract law case of Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, in which Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo wrote the opinion for New York's highest court, the New York Court of Appeals.

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[edit] Career

Daughter of civil engineer Douglas Sutherland and Elinor Saunders, Lucy Christiana Sutherland was born in London, England and raised in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Lucy’s younger sister was romantic novelist and screenwriter Elinor Glyn. In 1884, Lucy married James Stuart Wallace with whom she had a child, Esme. The couple divorced six years later in 1890. That year, in order to support herself and her child, Lucy began working as a dressmaker from home, and by 1894 had opened Maison Lucile in Old Burlington St, in the heart of the fashionable West End of London. In 1897, a larger shop was opened at 17 Hanover Square. She traded for a short while (circa 1901-04) at 14 George St. In 1903 the business was incorporated as "Lucile, Ltd" and the following year moved premises to 23 Hanover Square. In 1900 Lucile married Scottish landowner and sportsman Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon.

Lucile Ltd served a prestigious clientèle including aristocracy, royalty and theatre stars. Her business expanded with branches opening in New York City, Paris and Chicago in 1910, 1911 and 1915 respectively.

Lucile was most famous for her lingerie, tea gowns and evening wear, and she is widely credited with training the first professional fashion models (called mannequins) (1897) as well as staging the first runway or "catwalk" style shows. These affairs were theatrically inspired, invitation-only, tea-time presentations, complete with a stage, curtains, mood-setting lighting, music from a string band, souvenir gifts and programmes. Her dresses were given descriptive names, influenced by literature, popular culture, and Lucile's interest in the psychology and personality of her clients.

The designer was especially noted for layered, draped garments in romantic fabrics and sophisticated colors, often accentuated with sprays of hand-made silk flowers. However, she was also sought after for the simple, smart tailoring of her suits and daywear.

Some well-known clients, whose clothing influenced many when it appeared in early films, on stage and in the press, included: Irene Castle, Lily Elsie, Gertie Millar, Gaby Deslys, Billie Burke and Mary Pickford. Lucile costumed many theatrical productions including the London premiere of Franz Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow (1907), the Ziegfeld Follies revues on Broadway (1915 -1921) and the D. W. Griffith silent movie Way Down East (1920). Her fashions were also frequently featured in Pathé and Gaumont newsreels of the 1910s and 20s, and she appeared in her own weekly spot in the British newsreel "Around the Town" (c.1917 - 1919).

Lucile also wrote a weekly syndicated fashion page for the Hearst newspaper syndicate (1910 - 1922), and monthly columns for Harper's Bazaar and Good Housekeeping magazines (1912 - 1922).

In addition to her prolific career as a couturier, costumier, journalist and pundit, Lucile took significant advantage of commercial endorsements, lending her name to advertising for shoes, brassieres, perfume and other luxury apparel and beauty items. Among the most innovative of her licensing ventures were a two-season lower-priced, mail-order fashion line for Sears, Roebuck & Co. (1916-17), which promoted her clothing in special de luxe catalogs, and a contract to design interiors for limousines and town cars for the Chalmers Motor Co, later Chrysler Corporation (1917).

[edit] RMS Titanic

In 1912, Lady Duff Gordon was travelling to New York on business. She booked first-class passage with her husband, Sir Cosmo, on the ocean liner RMS Titanic under the names Mr. and Mrs. Morgan. Her secretary, Laura Mabel Francatelli, travelled with the couple. On April 14, at 11:40 PM the Titanic struck an iceberg and began to sink. During the evacuation the Duff Gordons and Miss Francatelli escaped in lifeboat 1. Though the lifeboat was built to hold forty people, it was lowered with just twelve -- most of whom were crewmen aboard Titanic.

Some time after the ship sank, while floating in the lifeboat, Lady Duff Gordon reportedly said to her secretary, "There is your beautiful nightdress gone." A fireman, annoyed by her comment, replied that while the couple could replace their property, he and the other crew members in the boat had lost everything. Sir Cosmo then offered each of them £5 to assist them until they received new assignments. While on the RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued Titanic survivors, the Duff Gordons presented the men with checks. Afterwards, this event transformed into a rumor that the Duff Gordons had bribed the crew with the money not to return and rescue survivors out of fear that the lifeboat would be swamped.

The rumors were fueled by the press in the United States and, eventually, the United Kingdom. On May 17, Cosmo Duff Gordon testified at the hearings of the British Board of Trade Inquiry into the disaster and on May 20 Lady Duff Gordon took the stand. Their testimony attracted the largest crowds during the inquiry. Many years later Lady Duff Gordon noted that while many of their friends claimed to show up to the inquiry in support, she felt that many were actually taking secret pleasure in seeing her and Sir Cosmo interrogated harshly both at the inquiry and by the press.

Sir Cosmo faced tough criticism during cross-examination, though Lucy had it slightly easier. Dressed in black, with a large, veiled hat, she told the court she remembered little about what happened in the lifeboat and could not recall any conversations. Attorneys, perhaps influenced by her mourning costume, did not press her very hard. Lady Duff Gordon noted that for the rest of her husband's life he was broken-hearted from being portrayed as a coward by the "yellow press" and by the attorneys at the inquiry. The final report by the inquiry determined that the Duff Gordons did not deter the crew from any attempt at rescue.[1] Lady Duff Gordon defended her husband until her death.

The Titanic episode is perhaps the most tangible in Lady Duff Gordon's life, thanks partly to motion pictures; she was portrayed in cameo by Harriette Johns in A Night to Remember (1958), produced by William MacQuitty, and again by Rosalind Ayres in James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster Titanic. In this film the role of Lucile's husband is portrayed by the actress' own husband Martin Jarvis.

A lavender silk kimono with black cord edging, for some time thought to have been worn by Lady Duff Gordon as she escaped the disaster, has since been shown to have belonged to her daughter Esme. A letter written by her does reveal that although she wore a lavender kimono-style bathrobe with similar black piping, it was a partially-made garment from the Paris branch of her salon. She also described wearing a pair of pink Yantony slippers, a blue head wrap and a squirrel coat. An apron said to have been worn by Miss Francatelli can be seen at the Maritime Museum in Liverpool, and her lifejacket was sold, along with correspondence about her Titanic experience, at Christie's, London, in 2007.

Lady Duff Gordon, who was shipwrecked as a child, had another close call three years after surviving the Titanic when she booked passage aboard the RMS Lusitania on its last voyage. However, she cancelled her trip due to illness. RMS Lusitania was destroyed by a German torpedo on May 7, 1915.[2]

[edit] Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon

In 1917, Lucile lost the New York Court of Appeals case of Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, in which Judge Cardozo made new law when he held Lucile to a contract that assigned the sole right to market her name to her advertising agent, Otis F. Wood. Cardozo famously opened the opinion with the following description of Lucile:

The defendant styles herself "a creator of fashions." Her favor helps a sale. Manufacturers of dresses, millinery, and like articles are glad to pay for a certificate of her approval. The things which she designs, fabrics, parasols, and what not, have a new value in the public mind when issued in her name.

Although the term "creator of fashions" was part of the tagline in her columns for the Hearst papers, some observers have claimed that Cardozo's tone revealed a certain disdain for Lucile's position in the world of fashion. Others accept that he was merely echoing language used by the defendant in her own submissions to the court as well as in her publicity.

[edit] Later life and death

Lucile's connection with her own design empire began to disintegrate following a restructuring of Lucile, Ltd in 1918-1919, and by September 1922 she had ceased designing for the company. Lucile Ltd continued after her departure with less success, while its founder (who continued to be known as Lucile) worked from private premises designing personally for individual clients. She was briefly associated with the firm of Reville, Ltd, maintained a ready-to-wear shop of her own and lent her name to a wholesale operation in America.

Lucile also continued as a fashion columnist and critic after her designing career ended, and she wrote her best-selling autobiography Discretions and Indiscretions in 1932. She died of breast cancer, complicated by pneumonia, in a Putney, London nursing home in 1935 at the age of 71. The date of her death, April 20, was the fourth anniversary of her husband's death.

[edit] Legacy

Lucile's former assistant, Howard Greer, published memories of his years working with her in the book Designing Male (1950). A dual biography of Lucile and her sister Elinor Glyn, called The 'It' Girls, by Meredith Etherington-Smith, was published in 1986; the title stemmed from Elinor's popularization of the euphemism "it" to denote sexuality or sexual appeal.

A number of international museum exhibitions have featured Lucile costumes in recent years, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Cubism and Fashion" (1999), the Museum of the City of New York's "Fashion on Stage" (1999) and the Victoria and Albert Museum's "Black in Fashion" (2000). As of 2006, the V&A included a Lucile suit on permanent exhibit. The first exhibition devoted exclusively to her work was the Fashion Institute of Technology's "Designing the It Girl: Lucile and Her Style" (2005). From its opening until January 2008 a small display of Lucile designs were shown at the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri.[3]

[edit] Titles

  • 1863-1884: Miss Lucy Christiana Sutherland
  • 1884-1900: Mrs. James Stuart Wallace
  • 1900-1935: Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Conduct of Sir Cosmo-Duff Gordon and Mr. Ismay. Titanic Inquiry Project. Retrieved on 2 January 2006.
  2. ^ [http://web.rmslusitania.info:81/pages/not_on_board/ The Lusitania Resource Project].
  3. ^ http://www.titanicbranson.com/ Titanic Museum website]
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  • De Marly, Diana. The History of Haute Couture. ISBN 0-7134-1988-1. 
  • Dormer, Peter, ed.. The Illustrated Dictionary of 20th Century Designers. ISBN 0-7924-5514-2. 
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