Spring Fashion & Accessories

My very first encounter with the entire idea of Pauline Trigère happened when I was a freshman at Carnegie Mellon University. I don’t recall exactly how I managed to get there, but somehow I found myself at a gala benefit for the Carnegie Museum of Art. It was black tie (I had a marvelous deep navy thrift store tuxedo made from wool as thick as a horse blanket with black grosgrain lapels.)

The evening featured a full-on runway show presented by Kaufman’s, the tony Pittsburgh department store. Their guest designer was Trigère, and I remember being blown away by the clothes: the dramatic coats and capes and one particular evening dress in black velvet with shocking pink satin.

I went to Kaufman’s flagship store the next day looking for Mme. Trigère the way a groupie would stalk a rock star after a concert. I remember her as being the chicest creature I had ever seen, what with all those jangling gold bracelets and turtle brooches pinned to her skirt and darkly tinted tortoise shell glasses. She reeked of this heady floral perfume that I grew to love. I don’t think I actually got to meet her. But then and there I realized that I wanted to be a fashion designer.

This was only further reinforced when I bought the book, “American Fashion: The Life and Lines of Adrian, Mainbocher, McCardell, Norell and Trigère.” It became my bible and I pored over it again and again, especially the chapter on Trigère in which there was a good bit about her work for Lady Bird Johnson, captained “My White House.” Yup, I told myself, I’m going to be a fashion designer and get invited to The White House because of it. Imagine how I felt when that really happened in 1994!

But more than anything else, my belief in a higher power revealed itself when at the start of my senior year at Parsons School of Design it was announced that Pauline Trigère would be serving as one of the guest critics for my class, after a decades-long absence. How was this even happening?

I sketched feverishly into the night, hoping that my design for a double-faced wool cape with asymmetrical funnel collar would appeal to her. And as she sat at a big table in “The Norell Room” at Parsons looking through the piles of student sketches, she finally got to mine and said, “Now THIS I can do!”

The big question, of course, was whether I could do it. I could draw anything, but wasn’t a talented draper or patternmaker, let alone a sewer. To this day, I cannot thread a sewing machine. But once again, divine intervention happened. “Come with me,” motioned my beloved teacher Theresa Ciapetta, who once worked for Norman Norell. “I have something in the archives that will be a big help to you.” It was an Yves Saint Laurent cape. I traced the style lines off of it, added my unique collar, and bingo, a cape that ultimately won me the Pauline Trigère Gold Thimble at the 1980 Parsons Fashion Critics Awards Show.

Pauline and I remained friends for the rest of her life. I even worked for her for a heartbeat, doing menial tasks like delivering buttons to Abe Schrader’s coat factory. And when I was offered a real design job in Boston, it was Pauline who said, “Take it! If it doesn’t work out, you can always come back to me.”

I will never forget this extraordinary woman, an enigmatic cross between Coco Chanel and the quintessential Jewish mother, who could squint her eyes at a bolt of fabric, cut directly into it with the precision of a surgeon, put in a few pins from her magnetized wristlet, lit cigarette dangling from her lips, and voila, a gown that would simply take your breath away. There will never be another Pauline Trigère, and I will be forever grateful that I had her in my life.

Steven Stolman

January, 2025