Maggy Rouff

Maggy Rouff's parents ran the couture house of Drecoll, where Rouff began her design career. She founded her own couture house in Paris in 1929, and was especially known for her sportswear and lingerie. "But please note," her husband once said, "she was not in trade, she [was] an artist."

Rouff once described herself as a couturier, deliberately rejecting the female title of couturière, "for I make a great distinction between the two terms," she said. "The couturier is a general who is more or less qualified, and who has, under his command, an army of collaborators. A couturière can, indeed, be very great and important . . . but the word by itself implies a knowledge and experience of manual labor. And I scarcely know how to cut!" In 1938, she published (anonymously) Ce que j'ai vu en chiffonnant la clientéle, which described her experiences in the world of fashion. In 1942, she published La philosophie de l'elégance, which characterized elegance as harmony between a woman and her surroundings. She retired in 1948.