Mainbocher

Main Rousseau Bocher, better known to the fashion world as Mainbocher, was the first American to achieve success as a Parisian couturier. He had a particular talent for combining the aesthetic with the utilitarian, and thereby produced garments that were elegant yet practical. Specializing in understated, conservative clothes, Mainbocher created designs that projected a sense of reserved prestige. “True elegance is a lifetime’s pursuit, not the fad of a season,” he once declared.

Raised in Chicago, Bocher studied art at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. After his military service in the First World War, he remained in Paris, working as an illustrator for Harper’s Bazaar. He later assumed the position of editor at French Vogue. He soon realized that his critical eye and sense for fashion could serve him well as a designer, and he resolved to become a couturier. In 1930, he opened a couture salon in Paris, and assumed the name Mainbocher—combining his first and last names in emulation of couturiers Agustabernard and Louiseboulanger, whose work he greatly admired.

Mainbocher dressed some of the most influential women of his time, including Elsie de Wolfe, Irene Castle, Anita Loos, Ethel Merman, Rosalind Russell, and Babe Paley. However, his most celebrated client—and best advertisement—undoubtedly was Wallis Simpson, whom he outfitted like royalty even before her marriage to the Duke of Windsor in 1937. For that momentous occasion, Mainbocher designed Mrs. Simpson’s famed “Wallis blue” wedding ensemble, which would become one of the most copied wedding dresses in history. He also designed uniforms for the WAVES, the American Red Cross, and the Marine Women’s Corps—outfitting dutiful American women in their very own Mainbocher creations.

Mainbocher’s designs have a refined elegance. As the former editor of Life, Sally Kirkland, once said, “He not only made a woman look like a lady, but as if her mother had been a lady too.” Mainbocher had the ability to combine restraint and practicality in his designs, and his work has been described by the fashion press as “pure” and “serene.” While he preferred to improve upon many of his signature styles, which included subdued evening dresses, overskirts, decorative bib-front bodices, and short evening dresses, Mainbocher’s career was also marked by significant innovations, such as the strapless evening dress and the cinched-in “wasp” waist that he presented in his last pre-war collection.