In yesterday's post we looked at model Barbara Mullen and at a project trying to rediscover iconic images portraying her. There is actually a famous picture of Mullen that we didn't include in that post: it shows the model captured in 1951 by Richard Avedon in a floral headpiece by milliner Lilly Daché. Mullen often modelled headpieces by Daché in the photoshoots in which she appeared, so it is worthwhile rediscovering this milliner for her connections with Mullen and for her flamboyant creations.
Born in 1898 (or 1896) in France (even though some say she was Polish or Romanian), as a young child she wasn't considered a conventional beauty, so she took to creating decorative accessories to enhance her beauty employing unusual materials including grape leaves (a practice that will convince her in later years that, when your hat is correct, it will compensate many faults).
At 15 Daché became an apprentice to Paris milliners Caroline Reboux and Suzanne Talbot, emigrating to the United States between 1919 and 1924.
Daché first worked at Macy's Department store in New York and at the Bonnet Shop, an independent hat shop on the Upper West Side; she became a milliner after she bought it with a co-worker.
In 1931, Daché married French-born Jean Despres, an executive at the large cosmetics and fragrance company Coty Inc., and started collaborating with them.
A few years later she moved to a nine story building on 78 East 56th Street, where she set her personal, work and retail spaces.
The business flourished even during the depression era, as women focused more on accessories than on clothes, and hats continued therefore to be in demand.
Daché became well-known for fancy oversized draped turbans at times featuring large fabric flowers (the first hat she made for her own boss was a turban in four shades of blue, made from scraps she found in the shop), large brimmed hats, visored caps for war workers, and snoods. It is said that her production ran as high as 30,000 hats a year.
Together with John-Fredericks, Walter Florell, Laddie Northridge and Sally Victor, Daché became part of a group of milliners who were better known at the time than fashion designers and who charmed many celebrity clients and Hollywood stars such as Maria Montez, Carmen Miranda, Sonja Henie, Audrey Hepburn, Carole Lombard and Marlene Dietrich.
Actress Linda Darnell is portrayed in a famous picture wearing a Daché hat with a futuristic see-through circle around it, and legend goes that Daché's last customer was Loretta Young, who arrived at her studio after she decided to retire and bought her last 30 hats.
Daché was the recipient of famous design prizes - the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award (1940) and the Coty American Fashion Critics Award (1943).
By 1949, Daché was designing clothing accessories, she had her own perfume and a costume jewelry line; in the early '50s the trademark Coty girl was embodied by a young woman in a strikingly elegant black Lilly Daché hat.
Around 1954 Coty established General Beauty Products Inc., to distribute Lucien Lelong, Marie Earle and Lilly Daché Hair Cosmetics in the United States.
After five years Daché was given the right to purchase 20% of the shares of General Beauty Products and she also took up the role of president of General Beauty Products.
At the end of the 1950's she hired a young assistant - Halston Frowick - who went on to become known for his own line of clothes, while leading New York hairdresser Kenneth Battelle took charge of her hair salon.
Throughout the '50s Daché became a bit of a celebrity, she was indeed a mystery guest on a 28th August 1955 episode of the TV game show "What's My Line?"
She was referenced in the song "Tangerine" performed by the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra ("Tangerine / She is all they say / With mascara'd eye and chapeaux by Daché") and wrote a few books including her autobiography, Talking through My Hats (1946) and The Glamour Book (1956).
As the hat business gradually declined, in 1968 Daché decided to retire. She died at a nursing home in Louvecienne, France in 1989.
Daché was certainly known for her kitschly glamorous headpieces characterised by masses of bows and blossoming flowers, but some of her less extravagant yet still striking hats included architectural features such as elliptical brims and spiralling patterns.
One of the most popular creations remains the versatile "circle hat" that was based on a simple pattern, published on the popular Family Circle magazine.
Among Daché's most extravagant inventions there were veils that were tinted green across the eyes and blush-rose across the cheeks.
There are some striking examples of Lilly Daché's headpieces, turbans and snoods in a few museums like the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Met Museum: if you check their archives you will spot, for example, creations from the 1950s such as a multiple tiered spiralling black astrakhan wool and net hat, but also an extravagant 1957 floral design in bright shades of scarlet and fuchsia silk satin.
One of the most extraordinary designs is kept at the Philadelphia Museum of Art - it is a headpiece covered in straw leaves and pine cones (1958).
Yet there are many more creations by Daché to explore and get inspired by all over the Internet and, after seeing some of them, you will certainly wish we still lived in times in which adding a fancy hat to one's wardrobe was almost more desirable than getting a brand new dress.
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