Marie-Louise Carven, Designer of Accessible Chic, Dies at 105
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Version 0 of 1. Marie-Louise Carven, who founded the House of Carven and helped shape French fashion in the postwar years, died on Monday at her home in Paris. She was 105. The Fédération Française de la Couture confirmed her death. Mrs. Carven, who was known professionally as Madame Carven, was not just a designer; she was also a skilled marketer. Her perfume, Ma Griffe, was introduced in 1946, and in 1950 she became one of the first couturiers, along with Jacques Fath and Pierre Balmain, to develop prêt-à-porter, which rendered formerly elitist fashions accessible to a new group of customers. She also patented a push-up bra. When “Gone With the Wind” was belatedly released in France in 1950, she put out a collection inspired by the film and put on fashion shows at movie theaters. Among her clients were Édith Piaf and Leslie Caron, and she designed costumes for films including “Les Diaboliques,” starring Simone Signoret. The brand Mrs. Carven built has become synonymous with the rise of “contemporary” in French fashion: that is, the midprice, coolly accessible sector of clothes that has runway credibility while being relatively wallet-friendly. But in many ways, she established the template. Born Carmen de Tommaso on Aug. 31, 1909, in Châtellerault, France, Mrs. Carven was one of the few Parisian women to become designers in the generation after Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli. She opened her house in 1945 in part because she was looking for clothes for herself. She was 5 feet 1 inch tall. “I decided to make haute couture outfits in my size because I was too short to wear the creations of the top couturiers, who only ever showed their designs on towering girls,” Women’s Wear Daily quoted her as saying in 1950. Mrs. Carven continued designing until she was 84. In 2009, a party celebrating her 100th birthday was held at the Palais Galliera fashion museum in Paris, and she was made a commander of the Legion of Honor. That same year, Carven’s current chief executive, Henri Sebaoun, appointed an unknown designer, Guillaume Henry, as the house’s creative director, and the brand became a hot name on the Paris show schedule once again. Mr. Henry left last year and was replaced by Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud. Mrs. Carven has no immediate survivors. She was formative, and not just for the house that bears her name. As Didier Grumbach, honorary president of the Fédération Française de la Couture, said, she was a “doyenne of great fashion designers.” |