Mainbocher

Main Rousseau Bocher, who ran his couture house as simply "Mainbocher," had one of the most unusual routes into fashion of any designer on this site. Born in Chicago, he trained as an artist and musician, worked as a fashion illustrator, and then became editor of French Vogue - before leaving journalism in 1929 to open his own couture house in Paris. That made him the first American to establish a successful Paris couture house, which was a remarkable thing to pull off in a city that took its fashion very seriously and didn't particularly trust outsiders.

His style was the opposite of Schiaparelli's playful surrealism. Mainbocher made quiet, expensive, beautifully cut clothes for a wealthy international clientele - simple lines, fine fabrics, and a restrained elegance that never shouted. His most famous commission was the wedding dress for Wallis Simpson's 1937 marriage to the Duke of Windsor, a long, slim gown in a soft pale blue that became known as "Wallis blue." It was copied everywhere, and it's covered more in the Wallis Simpson entry.

He's also behind one of the most famous fashion photographs of the 1930s: Horst P. Horst's August 1939 image of a model from behind in a laced corset made by the corsetière Detolle for Mainbocher, which captures the nipped-waist silhouette of the last pre-war collections. When war came, Mainbocher returned to New York in 1940 and reopened there, becoming an important part of American fashion's wartime rise. I think he's a lovely example of someone who understood both sides of fashion - the writing about it and the making of it - and was excellent at both.