Juli Lynne Charlot, Creator of the Poodle Skirt, Dies at 101

 Juli Lynne Charlot, Creator of the Poodle Skirt, Dies at 101


What’s a pleasant Jewish viscountess to do when she has a title however no cash, a celebration invitation however no garments and a pair of scissors however no stitching expertise?

Invent the poodle skirt, in fact.

That, fairly accidentally, is what Juli Lynne Charlot did in late 1947, within the course of making a totem of midcentury materials tradition as evocative because the saddle shoe, the Hula-Hoop and the pink plastic garden flamingo.

Ms. Charlot, a New York native who died at her dwelling in Tepoztlán, Mexico, on Sunday at 101, had been a Hollywood singer earlier than her marriage within the mid-Forties to a viscount, or British nobleman. Style aware however hopeless with a needle, she stumbled by necessity onto a sample for a placing skirt that concerned no stitching: Take a big swath of solid-colored felt, reduce it into an expansive circle, adorn it with jaunty appliquéd figures in contrasting colours, snip a gap within the middle and pop your self in.

The outcome, the embellished circle skirt, was ubiquitous all through the Nineteen Fifties, purchased in droves by girls and, particularly, adolescent ladies. With its voluminous material that flared prettily when the wearer twirled, it was simply the factor for a sock hop.

Over time, circle skirts by Ms. Charlot and her many imitators got here adorned with a spread of figurative appliqués, usually comprising small visible narratives. However as a result of the garment’s hottest incarnation sported pictures of poodles, all such skirts got here generically to be referred to as poodle skirts.

“After I was an adolescent, each lady in your entire Western world wore a poodle skirt,” the humorist Erma Bombeck wrote in a 1984 column. She went on to outline it as “a skirt with sufficient material to slipcover New Jersey with a giant poodle appliquéd on it.”

Born fairly actually of postwar abundance — material was not briefly provide — the poodle skirt merged seamlessly with the youth tradition of the Nineteen Fifties, a set of glad rags that appeared to presage a carefree period. By no means thoughts the Chilly Struggle, the skirt appeared to say: We’re gonna rock across the clock.

In later years, the poodle skirt turned visible shorthand for your entire decade. Even now, a manufacturing of “Grease” or “Bye Bye Birdie” can scarcely be mounted with out one in proof.

The daughter of Phillip and Betty (Cohen) Agin, Jewish immigrants from Japanese Europe, Ms. Charlot was born Shirley Agin on Oct. 26, 1922, in Manhattan.

When she was a toddler, her household moved to Southern California. There, her father, an electrician, and her mom, an embroiderer, plied their trades at Hollywood studios.

“It was simpler to be poor in a benign local weather,” Ms. Charlot stated in 2017, at 94, in an interview for this obituary that ranged over her singing profession (“I nonetheless have a voice, by the best way”); her inconceivable stage appearances with the Marx Brothers (“I used to be very lovely then”); her penchant for marriage and romance (“I used to be at all times in love with any individual”); and her work as a self-taught designer.

Younger Shirley’s faculty pals included entertainers-to-be like the longer term Judy Garland, the longer term Ann Miller and the longer term Lana Turner. Possessed of a superb soprano voice, she started taking voice classes at 13, decided to turn into an opera singer. “I used to be going to be the best exponent of Mozart,” she stated.

As a result of she thought Shirley no match title for a diva, she adopted the skilled title Juli Lynne.

After graduating from Hollywood Excessive Faculty, she sang with the Los Angeles Civic Mild Opera and with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra. Throughout World Struggle II she appeared with the Marx Brothers on a tour of stateside navy bases.

All through her performing years, she designed her personal wardrobe. As a result of she had refused to study to stitch (“I didn’t wish to be a drudge, like my mom,” she stated), she employed a seamstress to comprehend her designs in material.

Ms. Charlot had no scarcity of “movie star admirers,” she stated, amongst them Harold Lloyd, Gary Cooper and Isaac Stern, the violinist.

She married 4 occasions, “to 2 millionaires, a royal depend and a son of a” — and right here she paused for dramatic impact — “baron.”

The primary marriage, to the primary millionaire, “didn’t really matter,” Ms. Charlot stated. They had been divorced after three days.

Simply after the conflict, she eloped to Las Vegas with Philip Charlot, an officer within the British Royal Navy. The son of a French father and an English mom, he was additionally, she discovered solely later, a viscount.

At his request, she gave up her profession, settling for all times as a stay-at-home viscountess. Her husband discovered work as a Hollywood movie editor.

In December 1947, she was invited to a Hollywood Christmas occasion. She had nothing appropriate to put on and no cash: Her husband had just lately misplaced his job.

A fairy godmother intervened within the individual of Ms. Charlot’s mom, who by then had a young children’s put on manufacturing facility. She gave her daughter an unlimited sheet of white felt.

Out got here the scissors, and earlier than lengthy, Ms. Charlot discovered herself on the middle of a white circle skirt.

“I labored out the opening with my brother’s slide rule: C = 2πr,” she stated in 2017. She may sew simply effectively sufficient by hand to appliqué inexperienced felt Christmas timber onto the background.

“My mom had a cigar field filled with little tchotchkes that she utilized in her work,” she stated. “These went onto the Christmas timber as decorations.”

The skirt was “an enormous hit” on the occasion, she recalled.

She made a number of related skirts and took them to a Beverly Hills boutique. They bought out.

After the vacations, the shop requested a nonseasonal design. She created a tableau of dachshunds chasing one another across the skirt. As soon as the dachshunds bought, the shop steered she flip her consideration to poodles. French poodles had been très stylish on the time, and many shoppers owned them.

The poodles pummeled the dachshunds.

At the moment, Ms. Charlot’s skirts are prized by collectors of classic clothes and may promote for a lot of a whole lot of {dollars} every.

Earlier than lengthy, Ms. Charlot had a poodle-skirt manufacturing facility. She made skirts adorned with pictures of frogs and lily pads, Parisian avenue scenes, galloping racehorses, cascading flowers, and champagne glasses and pink elephants, together with coordinating blouses, attire, hats and purses.

By the early Nineteen Fifties, her skirts had been promoting for about $35 apiece — some $400 in right this moment’s cash.

As a result of Ms. Charlot’s enterprise expertise had been, by her personal account, on par along with her stitching, her manufacturing facility floundered at first. “Mom hocked her diamond ring three weeks in a row to assist me meet the payroll,” she instructed the information service United Press in 1953.

However with the assistance of an investor — and with orders from unique malls, together with Bullock’s Wilshire in Los Angeles, Neiman Marcus in Dallas and Bergdorf Goodman in New York — her future was assured.

At the moment, Ms. Charlot’s skirts are prized by collectors of classic clothes and may promote for a lot of a whole lot of {dollars} every.

Ms. Charlot’s marriage to her viscount didn’t endure. On the peak of her success as a designer, she was summoned to tea by his mom. “The extra profitable you turn into, the much less profitable he turns into,” she recalled her mother-in-law saying. “You might be destroying my son.”

Although Ms. Charlot beloved her husband deeply, she gave him a divorce, she stated, so he may recoup his life.

Ms. Charlot’s third marriage, to the second millionaire, led to divorce, as did her fourth, to the Mexican-born son of a German baron. He had not troubled to inform her, she found, that he had been married to 2 girls beforehand and had by no means fairly bothered to divorce both.

Ms. Charlot leaves no quick household.

In later years, Ms. Charlot, whose loss of life was confirmed by her buddy Carol Hopkins, manufactured modern renditions of conventional Mexican wedding ceremony attire. She had lived in Tepoztlán, south of Mexico Metropolis, for the reason that Nineteen Eighties.

By the peak of the Swinging Sixties, the miniskirt had put paid to the poodle. However earlier than that occurred, a younger girl was captured in a press {photograph} that betrayed the attain of Ms. Charlot’s work.

The long run Queen Elizabeth II in a poodle skirt at a hoe down in Canada in 1951.Credit score…The LIFE Image Assortment/Getty Photographs

The time was 1951, and the place was Ottawa, the place the girl was attending a hoedown on the dwelling of Canada’s governor normal. At 25, she had by no means seen a hoedown, and was tutored privately in its mysteries earlier than the dancing started.

The girl, attired in a metal blue circle skirt by Ms. Charlot appliquéd with hearts, flowering branches and stylized figures of Romeo and Juliet, acquitted herself admirably, in line with information experiences.

Her title was Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, and she or he could be identified from the following 12 months on as Queen Elizabeth II.

Alex Traub contributed reporting.



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