Pauline Trigère

Pauline Trigère (1912–2002) was a French fashion designer, known for her crisp, tailored cuts and innovative ideas.

Trigère was born in Paris to Russian Jewish parents. Her father Alexandre was a tailor, her mother Cecile was a dressmaker. Trigère designed her first dress in her early teens, but at that age she was more interested in acting and medicine than fashion design. While still living in Paris, Trigère apprenticed at Martial et Armand and married Lazar Radley, a Russian Jewish tailor.

Uneasy about the political situation, Trigère, her mother, her husband, and their two sons left Paris in 1937. Trigère did not foresee running her own business when she first arrived in New York. In a 1984, she said of this time in her life “I was really a little housewife with two small children and I had a husband who really didn’t want his wife to work." After arriving in New York, Trigère found work assisting Travis Banton at Hattie Carnegie. Carnegie closed the shop Trigère worked at after Pearl Harbor, Trigere put together a collection of eleven dresses. Travelling by Greyhound Bus, her brother sold the dresses took the dresses to department across the country. The endeavor was a success and a year later, Trigère took over Carnegie’s lease, paying double the rent. Trigère won the first of her three Coty Awards in 1949. Lazar left the family in 1942 and the couple eventually divorced. According to Trigère, “He didn’t like the competition. That’s why I’m not married to him anymore.”

Trigère did not sketch her designs, she cut and draped from bolts of fabric. Although she was considered "a designer of classy, frill-less ready-to-wear," Trigère's work was inventive in many ways. In the 1940s, Trigère was among the first designers to use common fabrics as cotton and wool in evening wear. In the 1960s, she introduced the jumpsuit as a fashion staple. In 1967, she designed the first rhinestone bra.

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