Pauline Trigere, prominent fashion designer for more than 50 years, died last week in New York. She was 93.
In 1993, the year after her 50th year in fashion was celebrated in New York, she was presented the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Both her designs and her beliefs were influential. In 1961, she became the first big-name designer to use an African-American model.
Born in Paris to a dressmaker mother and tailor father, she learned her craft in the rear of their Pigalle shop. In 1937, fearful of the approaching Nazi storm, she and her husband and two children fled France bound for Chile. The boat stopped first in New York, and she didn't go further. Instead, they opened a small tailoring business there. Within 10 years, her designs were gaining recognition, retail customers and awards.
During her long career, she received three Coty Awards, inclusion in the Coty Hall of Fame, fashion awards from Neiman Marcus and Filene's, the National Cotton Award, silver and vermeil medals from the city of Paris and, two months ago, the French Legion of Honor.
She closed her ready-to-wear business in 1994, moved out of her large Seventh Avenue showroom space and took a small space elsewhere with her newly formed P.T. Concepts, marketing scarves and jewelry. She gave that business up in 2000.