“I am the Rolls-Royce of the fashion trade,” says Manhattan’s Mainbocher, and it is a simple statement of fact. At 72, the short, round little man with the synthetic name can boast that his ...
Almost seven decades later, Chicago-born Mainbocher (Main Rousseau Bocher, 1891-1976) perfected those standards while designing in Paris and later transported his Parisian-based skills across the ...
But where Mainbocher was a fashion insider—he began his career as the editor of Paris Vogue—Lowe, the granddaughter of an enslaved woman, learned to sew as a child in her family’s ...