Hattie Carnegie, Fashion Entrepreneur

In the world of fashion design, the name Hattie Carnegie has not been heard for years. But there was a time when Hattie Carnegie set the pace for American fashion for almost three decades.

Born in Vienna Austria in 1886, the second of seven children, she was named Henrietta Kanengeiser. The family migrated to New York in 1892 and lived on the Lower East Side. At the age of 23, she changed her last name to Carnegie. It was a stroke of vision on Henrietta's part. The name change was prompted by the richest person in America at that time, Andrew Carnegie.

The same year she changed her name, Carnegie also formed a partnership with seamstress Ruth Ross. Carnegie's meager beginnings were a custom clothing and millinery shop on East 10th Street. Four years after beginning the shop, she and Ross moved to a more profitable location on West 86th Street.

By this time, clients such as Mrs. William Randolph Hearst were patronizing Carnegie's designs.

Though Carnegie herself couldn't even sew on a button, she had an eye for talent and surrounded herself with the talented people who would take her to the top. Carnegie traveled to Paris where she would not only bring back French fashion, she would also redesign them specifically for her American customers.

Carnegie was the first designer whose work was bought by stores for wholesale. I. Magnin was the first store to carry Carnegie designs in 1925, with both the I. Magnin and the Hattie Carnegie label.

"We have the loveliest women in the world in this county and wherever there are beautiful women there will be beautiful clothes," Carnegie once stated. "To show the American woman herself off to best advantage-that has always been my aim and that is my real biography."[1]

Carnegie eventually bought out her partner and moved her business to East 49th Street. From there, she sold clothing, furs, jewelry, perfume and other fashion accessories. She created the Jeune Fille department which sold lower-priced clothing to younger customers.

But her steady customers consisted of Hollywood stars and even royalty. Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Crawford and the Duchess of Windsor were among the prominent women who wore the "Carnegie look," a style that was very feminine and very neat.

Though it was dubbed the "Carnegie look," Carnegie herself shunned such labels. As she stated, "there is really no 'Carnegie Look,' there is only the 'you' look. My clothes are built to show off the woman who wears them. I like them to be simple, complicated and simple, to move well, to move with the times and a little ahead of them. The dress itself should never take over. On the contrary a woman should feel so at ease in her clothes that she can forget all about them."[1]

In 1950, Carnegie was called upon to design a uniform for the Women's Army Corps (WAC). Carnegie's design was implemented in 1951 and remained in use until 1968. She received the Congressional Medal of Freedom in 1952 for this service.

By the sixties, fashion had greatly changed in America. Fashions were beginning to lean more towards casual wear and Carnegie's fashions were more sophisticated.

Carnegie's death in 1956 also heralded a decline in her overall business. Without Carnegie's leadership at the helm, the company encountered difficulties in maintaining its success. Nevertheless, the Carnegie empire continued until the seventies. At its high point, Carnegie, Inc. was a ten-million dollar empire.

Carnegie married Major John Zanft, her third marriage although no information is available regarding her other two marriages. Zanft was a former vice president of Fox Films.

Carnegie received the Neiman Marcus award in 1939 and the Coty American Fashion Critics Award in 1948.

"Hattie Carnegie Jewelry: Her Life And Legacy" by Georgiana McCall was published by Schiffer Publishing in 2004.

Sources:

[1] Jewish Women's Archive
Hattie Carnegie website