Sonja de Lennart
Sonja de Lennart | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 21 May 1920 |
| Occupation | Fashion designer |
| Years active | 1945–present |
| Known for | Inventing capri pants[disputed – discuss] |
Sonja de Lennart is a German fashion designer. In 1948, she invented capri pants.[1][2][disputed – discuss]
Early life
[edit]de Lennart was born in Prussia in 1920.[3] She grew up in Wrocław, and then studied textiles in Berlin.[4]
Fashion career
[edit]
In 1945, after the war, Sonja de Lennart began to produce fashion wear and opened her first boutique, Salon Sonja, in Munich. In the beginning she would cut piece of paper to demonstrate the fit of clothing on her customers.[4]
Her fashion career began when the fashion advisor of the Taylor's Guild, M. Ponater, allowed de Lennart to exhibit one of her first creations (a hand painted dress which she painted herself and displayed on a mannequin) in one corner of Ponater’s booth at the Fashion Trade Fair, Handwerksmesse,[citation needed] where he was displaying and selling his own fashion collection. This event turned into the beginning of the distribution of de Lennart’s creations. After this show, the family began to manufacture another of her creations, imitation leather vestures, as well as three-quarter length coats that were exhibited at the Craftsman Fair and distributed nationwide becoming a bestseller.[citation needed]
In that same year, she created a wide-swinging skirt with a wide belt (which she modeled herself),[5] a blouse, and hat. Her design collection was named the Capri Collection[6] after the Island of Capri that was important to the designer.[7]
de Lennart first made Capri pants in the late 1940s and the actresses Mady Rahl and Erni Mangold wore them in 1949.[8] The Capri pant had a short slit on the outer-side of the pant leg, and they started to become popular in 1954 when Audrey Hepburn wore them in the movie A Heart and a Crown.[4]
In 1952, Edith Head used de Lennart's Capri Collection including a skirt, a high-neck blouse, and Capri pants for Audrey Hepburn in the movie, Roman Holiday.[9]
In 1953, Hubert de Givenchy had de Lennart's Capri pants stitched for Audrey Hepburn, which she wore in the movie Sabrina (1954).[citation needed]
References
[edit]- ^ "18. Juli 2003 / sw Abbildung: The Fifties (Fashionsourcebooks), Paperback Verlag". Archived from the original on 19 July 2011.
- ^ - Capri Pants: A Timeless Fashion Trend Archived 2016-03-07 at the Wayback Machine (Fashion Style You, retrieved 08 August 2008)
- ^ "MoMA: Art and artists". Museum of Modern Art, New York City.
- ^ a b c Reitter-Welter, Barbara (28 June 2015). "Fur Klosterschulerinnen verboten". Welt am Sonntag; Berlin – via Proquest.
- ^ Sonja de Lennart Archived 2008-08-27 at the Wayback Machine(Wide swinging skirt and belt modeled by Sonja de Lennart)
- ^ Hendricks, Nancy (17 August 2018). Popular Fads and Crazes through American History: [2 volumes]. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. pp. 274–276. ISBN 978-1-4408-5183-4.
- ^ Antonelli, Paola (2017). ITEMS : is fashion modern?. Internet Archive. New York, New York : Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 978-1-63345-036-3.
- ^ Gallardo, Carmen (7 April 2012). "CAPRI, CE N'EST PAS FINI". El Mundo ; Madrid. p. 15 – via Proquest.
- ^ Muñoz, Elena (2 September 2023). "The history of capri pants, the design that encouraged women around the world to forget skirts and dresses". EL PAÍS English. Retrieved 18 October 2024.