What’s a pleasant Jewish viscountess to do when she has a title however no cash, a celebration invitation however no garments and a pair of scissors however no stitching expertise?
Invent the poodle skirt, in fact.
That, fairly accidentally, is what Juli Lynne Charlot did in late 1947, within the course of making a totem of midcentury materials tradition as evocative because the saddle shoe, the Hula-Hoop and the pink plastic garden flamingo.
Ms. Charlot, a New York native who died at her residence in Tepoztlán, Mexico, on Sunday at 101, had been a Hollywood singer earlier than her marriage within the mid-Forties to a viscount, or British nobleman. Style conscious however hopeless with a needle, she stumbled by necessity onto a sample for a hanging skirt that concerned no stitching: Take a big swath of solid-colored felt, lower it into an expansive circle, adorn it with jaunty appliquéd figures in contrasting colours, snip a gap within the middle and pop your self in.
The end result, the embellished circle skirt, was ubiquitous all through the Fifties, purchased in droves by girls and, particularly, adolescent women. With its voluminous cloth that flared prettily when the wearer twirled, it was simply the factor for a sock hop.
Through the years, circle skirts by Ms. Charlot and her many imitators got here adorned with a variety of figurative appliqués, typically comprising small visible narratives. However as a result of the garment’s hottest incarnation sported photographs of poodles, all such skirts got here generically to be referred to as poodle skirts.
“Once I was a teen, each woman in your complete Western world wore a poodle skirt,” the humorist Erma Bombeck wrote in a 1984 column. She went on to outline it as “a skirt with sufficient material to slipcover New Jersey with a giant poodle appliquéd on it.”
Born fairly actually of postwar abundance — cloth was now not briefly provide — the poodle skirt merged seamlessly with the youth tradition of the Fifties, a set of glad rags that appeared to presage a carefree period. By no means thoughts the Chilly Warfare, the skirt appeared to say: We’re gonna rock across the clock.
In later years, the poodle skirt grew to become visible shorthand for your complete decade. Even now, a manufacturing of “Grease” or “Bye Bye Birdie” can scarcely be mounted with out one in proof.
The daughter of Phillip and Betty (Cohen) Agin, Jewish immigrants from Jap Europe, Ms. Charlot was born Shirley Agin on Oct. 26, 1922, in Manhattan.
When she was a baby, her household moved to Southern California. There, her father, an electrician, and her mom, an embroiderer, plied their trades at Hollywood studios.
“It was simpler to be poor in a benign local weather,” Ms. Charlot stated in 2017, at 94, in an interview for this obituary that ranged over her singing profession (“I nonetheless have a voice, by the best way”); her unbelievable stage appearances with the Marx Brothers (“I used to be very lovely then”); her penchant for marriage and romance (“I used to be all the time in love with anyone”); and her work as a self-taught designer.
Younger Shirley’s faculty mates included entertainers-to-be like the longer term Judy Garland, the longer term Ann Miller and the longer term Lana Turner. Possessed of a fantastic soprano voice, she started taking voice classes at 13, decided to turn out to be an opera singer. “I used to be going to be the best exponent of Mozart,” she stated.
As a result of she thought Shirley no match identify for a diva, she adopted the skilled identify Juli Lynne.
After graduating from Hollywood Excessive College, she sang with the Los Angeles Civic Gentle Opera and with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra. Throughout World Warfare II she appeared with the Marx Brothers on a tour of stateside navy bases.
All through her performing years, she designed her personal wardrobe. As a result of she had refused to be taught to stitch (“I didn’t need to be a drudge, like my mom,” she stated), she employed a seamstress to appreciate her designs in material.
Ms. Charlot had no scarcity of “movie star admirers,” she stated, amongst them Harold Lloyd, Gary Cooper and Isaac Stern, the violinist.
She married 4 instances, “to 2 millionaires, a royal depend and a son of a” — and right here she paused for dramatic impact — “baron.”
The primary marriage, to the primary millionaire, “didn’t actually matter,” Ms. Charlot stated. They have been divorced after three days.
Simply after the conflict, she eloped to Las Vegas with Philip Charlot, an officer within the British Royal Navy. The son of a French father and an English mom, he was additionally, she discovered solely later, a viscount.
At his request, she gave up her profession, settling for all times as a stay-at-home viscountess. Her husband discovered work as a Hollywood movie editor.
In December 1947, she was invited to a Hollywood Christmas celebration. She had nothing appropriate to put on and no cash: Her husband had not too long ago misplaced his job.
A fairy godmother intervened within the individual of Ms. Charlot’s mom, who by then had a young children’s put on manufacturing unit. She gave her daughter an enormous sheet of white felt.
Out got here the scissors, and earlier than lengthy, Ms. Charlot discovered herself on the middle of a white circle skirt.
“I labored out the outlet with my brother’s slide rule: C = 2πr,” she stated in 2017. She might sew simply nicely sufficient by hand to appliqué inexperienced felt Christmas bushes onto the background.
“My mom had a cigar field stuffed with little tchotchkes that she utilized in her work,” she stated. “These went onto the Christmas bushes as decorations.”
The skirt was “an enormous hit” on the celebration, she recalled.
She made a number of comparable skirts and took them to a Beverly Hills boutique. They bought out.
After the vacations, the shop requested a nonseasonal design. She created a tableau of dachshunds chasing one another across the skirt. As soon as the dachshunds bought, the shop steered she flip her consideration to poodles. French poodles have been très stylish on the time, and many shoppers owned them.
The poodles pummeled the dachshunds.
Earlier than lengthy, Ms. Charlot had a poodle-skirt manufacturing unit. She made skirts adorned with photographs of frogs and lily pads, Parisian avenue scenes, galloping racehorses, cascading flowers, and champagne glasses and pink elephants, together with coordinating blouses, clothes, hats and purses.
By the early Fifties, her skirts have been promoting for about $35 apiece — some $400 in in the present day’s cash.
As a result of Ms. Charlot’s enterprise expertise have been, by her personal account, on par along with her stitching, her manufacturing unit floundered at first. “Mom hocked her diamond ring three weeks in a row to assist me meet the payroll,” she advised the information service United Press in 1953.
However with the assistance of an investor — and with orders from unique shops, together with Bullock’s Wilshire in Los Angeles, Neiman Marcus in Dallas and Bergdorf Goodman in New York — her future was assured.
Right this moment, Ms. Charlot’s skirts are prized by collectors of classic clothes and may promote for a lot of a whole lot of {dollars} every.
Ms. Charlot’s marriage to her viscount didn’t endure. On the top of her success as a designer, she was summoned to tea by his mom. “The extra profitable you turn out to be, the much less profitable he turns into,” she recalled her mother-in-law saying. “You’re destroying my son.”
Although Ms. Charlot beloved her husband deeply, she gave him a divorce, she stated, so he might recoup his life.
Ms. Charlot’s third marriage, to the second millionaire, led to divorce, as did her fourth, to the Mexican-born son of a German baron. He had not troubled to inform her, she found, that he had been married to 2 girls beforehand and had by no means fairly bothered to divorce both.
Ms. Charlot leaves no speedy household.
In later years, Ms. Charlot, whose loss of life was confirmed by her pal Carol Hopkins, manufactured up to date renditions of conventional Mexican wedding ceremony clothes. She had lived in Tepoztlán, south of Mexico Metropolis, for the reason that Nineteen Eighties.
By the peak of the Swinging Sixties, the miniskirt had put paid to the poodle. However earlier than that occurred, a younger girl was captured in a press {photograph} that betrayed the attain of Ms. Charlot’s work.
The time was 1951, and the place was Ottawa, the place the girl was attending a hoedown on the residence of Canada’s governor normal. At 25, she had by no means seen a hoedown, and was tutored privately in its mysteries earlier than the dancing started.
The girl, attired in a metal blue circle skirt by Ms. Charlot appliquéd with hearts, flowering branches and stylized figures of Romeo and Juliet, acquitted herself admirably, in accordance with information stories.
Her identify was Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, and she or he could be identified from the subsequent yr on as Queen Elizabeth II.
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
