In the Lucy episode “Lucy Gets a Paris Gown” the gang is in Paris. Lucy and Ethel are enchanted by the work of French fashion designer Jacques Marcel and Lucy pretends to go on a hunger strike until Ricky buys her a Marcel original. Of course Ricky finds out she is pretending, so he and Fred play a trick on them. They make their own fashionable frocks out of potato sacks that Lucy and Ethel wear with pride until they realize the outfits are not real. The episode ends when the four are sitting in a cafe and see two models wearing Jacques Marcel creations that knock-off the burlap originals Lucy and Ethel wore the previous day.
One of those models, wearing the Marcel version is Georgia Holt, born Jackie Jean Crouch in 1926, but best known as Cher’s mother! Holt worked as a model in the 1940s and ’50s and did a few uncredited appearances in movies and TV shows in the 1950s.
I totally stole this story from METV if you want to check out the original.
Some of the earliest makers of these dresses include Tucson’s Dolores Gonzales, Cele Peterson, George Fine, and Lloyd Kiva New, but it was Albuquerque’s Jeanette Pave that was probably the most prolific manufacturer. Polish born Henry Pave and his wife Jeanette opened a store in Albuquerque in 1945. Between 1950 and 1968 Jeanette manufactured and distributed a line of squaw dresses sold under the label ‘Jeanette’s Originals’.
Since the 1910s fashion designers had been selling their designs to foreign manufacturers for creating ready-to-wear clothes. During the depressed economy of the 1930s, when individual clients were scarce, couture houses relied upon foreign manufacturers licensing designs for making ready-to-wear copies. As long as the couturiers didn’t sully their reputations by making the clothes themselves — It was okay to supply meat to the butcher, but you couldn’t make the sausage.
Seeing the success of Dior’s ventures, other designers looked for similar arrangements. Jacques Fath directly entered the American ready-to-wear market in 1948 designing a line for Joseph Halpert, a 7th avenue manufacturer in New York. Jacques Fath was also a member of Les Couturiers Associés, founded in 1950 by Jacques Fath, Robert Piguet, Jean-Marc Paquin, Marie-Louise Carven, and Jean Dessès. This association was an attempt at the creation of a prêt-à-porter indusry by leading French designers. A report in Adelaide Australia’s The Mail from April 28, 1951 advertises that 35 models from Fath, Piguet, Paquin, Carven, and Dessès would soon be reproduced in Australia by Myers (An Australian manufacturing company). The association seems to have only survived until 1954, probably due in part to the deaths of Piguet and Fath, as well as the imminent decline of the House of Paquin.
