Norman Norell was an American fashion designer. His clients included Jacqueline Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, the Duchess of Windsor, Mrs. William Paley, Dinah Shore, Carol Channing, and Lena Horne, as well as Lauren Bacall.
Background
Norman Norell was born on April 20, 1900 in Noblesville, Indiana, United States. He was the younger of two sons born to Harry Levinson and Nettie Kinsey. His father operated a men's clothing store; his mother enjoyed wearing the latest Paris fashions and taking little Norman shopping with her. When Norman was five years old, the family moved to nearby Indianapolis to continue the successful family business. Sickly and isolated as a child, Norman lived in his own fantasy world, influenced by the theater productions he often attended and his mother's fashion magazines. At the age of twelve his flair for drama expressed itself in gold, red, and black decor for his room, which featured a round bed.
Education
In his teens Norman attended a few classes at the Indianapolis Art Institute but moved to New York City in 1918 to study illustration at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, later known as Parsons School of Design. A year later he transferred to the Pratt Institute to study costume design and figure drawing, augmented by research at the New York Public Library.
In 1962, he was granted an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute, an honor that Newsweek proclaimed "unheard-of in the dress-designing business. "
Career
Norell found his first opportunity to design actual costumes in 1922, at the Astoria branch of Paramount Pictures, located in the borough of Queens in New York City. He dressed Rudolph Valentino in The Sainted Devil and Gloria Swanson in Zaza. Later he designed for a few Broadway musicals and joined the Brooks Costume Co. , which served vaudeville shows.
In 1924, Norell began working for Charles Armour, manufacturer of wholesale women's fashions, who sent him on his first buying trip to Europe. After three and a half years with Armour, Norell was hired by Hattie Carnegie, a successful businesswoman who sold clothes to many actresses. From her Norell learned how Paris couture was made, inside and out. It was his job to take the originals and translate them into clothes that Carnegie would sell retail and wholesale. While working for Carnegie, Norell was able to indulge his love of dramatic clothes. But he went too far when he refused to tone down a spangled skirt he had created for Gertrude Lawrence in Lady in the Dark. The actress liked it, but Carnegie wished to sell to the general market in a more restrained version. Norell was fired.
In 1941, Norell joined Anthony Traina's wholesale house of high-quality larger-sized women's fashions as a designer, with the agreement that for a lesser salary, Norell would have his name on the label, an unprecedented move at a time when most ready-to-wear designers remained anonymous.
One of Norell's first successes under the Traina-Norell label was a black-and-white checked crepe shirtwaist dress with a black patent leather belt. This garment was a stark contrast to the pretty but fussy floral dresses many women were wearing in 1942.
Norell became known for his ability to create simple, good-looking clothes within the limits of wartime L-85 restrictions on fabric amounts and types of materials.
During the 1940's, Norell developed lasting and influential characteristics of styling: simple, straight or shirtwaist silhouettes, covered up or very bare necklines, bowed collars on dresses and blouses, vested blouses with suits, bright colors punctuated by bold contrasting buttons, sable-trimmed wool for evening, spare yet lavish pavé sequins. Traina-Norell soon became a status symbol among American women.
As in haute couture, Norell designed hats, gloves, and shoes to create a unified distinctive look; pockets and buttons had to be functional.
So concerned was Norell that the design be copied correctly by the inescapable "knock-off" manufacturers, he released his working drawings for culottes to Women's Wear Daily, the fashion trade newspaper.
Although Norell was doing four million dollars of business per year by the 1960's, he dressed and lived simply, lunching at Schrafft's, dining at Hamburger Heaven, shopping for antiques, and spending many hours alone in the evenings, sketching.
As one of the faculty critics in the Parsons School costume design department, Norell was required to come to the school only three times per year. Instead, he came almost every morning on the way to work.
Norell's factory employed 150 workers, each responsible for individual garments from start to finish; nevertheless, Norell insisted on checking every dress himself before it was sent to the retail buyer. He designed hats for the Henri Bendel department store, but they did not sell well. About one hundred stores carried Norell's clothes, only in sizes 6-14; size 16 exceptions had to be approved by him personally. Doris Day wore a black evening dress and two suits by Norell in That Touch of Mink (1962).
In 1963 he designed Lee Remick's movie wardrobe for The Wheeler Dealers.
The career of the young designer Halston was boosted by Norell's inclusion of his hats in his autumn/winter 1964 collection, which featured satin fabrics and bell-bottomed pants for evening. At prices of three hundred to four thousand dollars each, between seven and ten thousand garments were produced that year. Only the best fabrics from France and Italy were used.
In 1968 Revlon launched Norell perfume, the first successful American fragrance bearing a designer's name.
A major retrospective showing of Norell's fifty-year career was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 16, 1972.
Views
During the 1940's, Norell developed the idea that there should be one center of interest in an outfit, "the simple dress that dramatizes its wearer. " He would not permit changes during manufacture to cut costs.
Quotations:
"Clothes should flow with the lines of the body. "
"I like to think I changed necklines. "
