Lucy Christiana Duff Gordon

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Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon

Lucy Christiana, Lady Duff Gordon (actually Lucille Christiana Duff Gordon , born as Lucille Christiana Sutherland , * 13. June 1863 in London , † 20 April 1935 ibid) was a British fashion designer and designer of the late 19th and early 20th century .

Life

Philip Alexius de László : Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, 1913

Lucy Christiana was the eldest daughter of the engineer Douglas Sutherland (1838-1865) and his wife Elinor Saunders (1841-1937). Her younger sister was the well-known writer and screenwriter Elinor Glyn (1864-1943). After the early death of her father, her mother and her daughters first moved to Toronto , Canada , and through their second husband, the family moved to the island of Jersey in 1872 . The upbringing of the daughters was closely monitored by their parents. Lucy was considered precocious and extremely intelligent.

Dancer Irene Castle in a model by Lady Duff Gordon, 1917
Fashion sketch by Lady Duff Gordon, 1922

In 1881, Lucy married the Scottish businessman James Stuart Wallace , who was just 18 years old . The marriage was not a good star and was divorced after only six years . The marriage had a daughter, Esme Sutherland Wallace (1885-1973), who later married Hardinge Goulburn Giffard (1880-1943), the only son of the British Lord Chancellor Hardinge Giffard (1823-1921). From this marriage a son, John Anthony Hardinge Giffard (1908-2000) was born.

In order to earn a living for herself and her daughter, Lucy opened a tailor shop and made lingerie , accessories , day and evening dresses in romantic and feminine styles. At the end of the 1890s her fashion studio The Maison Lucile on Hanover Square in central London was the first address for high society . Her customers included Mary Pickford , Gaby Deslys , Lily Elsie , Gertie Millar , Margot Asquith , Countess of Oxford and Mary, Duchess of York (later Queen Mary ). Lady Duff Gordon was also the first fashion designer to have her customers show off several mannequins on the catwalk . In 1896 she met the Scottish landowner and sportsman Sir Cosmo Edmund Duff Gordon, 5th Baronet , who introduced her to society and provided financial support. They were married in Edinburgh in June 1900 . In the following years she opened further branches of her haute couture house in New York City (1910), Paris (1911) and Chicago (1915).

In 1917, New York advertising agent Otis Wood sued fashion designer Lady Duff Gordon for breach of contract. The plaintiff had acquired the marketing rights for her label The Maison Lucile two years earlier and guaranteed her half of all income. At the same time, Lady Duff Gordon began designing a collection for Macy’s department stores, but without giving Wood any profits from it. In his opinion, this broke the agreement with Otis Wood, whereupon the latter filed a lawsuit against breach of contract. The court, chaired by Judge Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, dismissed the lawsuit.

Together with her husband, Lady Duff Gordon was among the first-class passengers on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic . In Cherbourg , France , the couple went on board with their secretary, Laura Mabel Francatelli. Following the collision of the luxury liner with an iceberg on April 14 at around 11:40 p.m. and its sinking at 2:20 a.m., the fashion designer, her husband and Francatelli, along with nine other people, were in a lifeboat designed for 40 passengers RMS Carpathia crew rescued. In the later investigations, they were questioned as witnesses.

In the early 1920s her fashion empire collapsed and she wrote as a columnist and fashion critic for various fashion magazines . She developed breast cancer in the late 1920s . After the death of her husband on April 20, 1931, she withdrew more and more from the public. Lady Duff Gordon died on April 20, 1935, exactly four years after her husband's death, of complications from pneumonia in a London nursing home at the age of 71.

She was portrayed by Rosalind Ayres in the 1997 film adaptation of the Titanic .

literature

  • Meredith Etherington-Smith, The It Girls: Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, the Couturiere Lucile, and Elinor Glyn, Romantic Novelist , Verlag Harcourt 1987, ISBN 978-0-15-145774-8
  • Judith Geller, Titanic: Women and Children First , Haynes 1998, ISBN 1-85260-594-4
  • Meredith Etherington-Smith and Jeremy Pilcher: The 'It' Girls: Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, the Couturiere "Lucile", and Elinor Glyn , ISBN 0-15-145774-3
  • Elizabeth Ewing, The History of 20th Century Fashion , ISBN 0-7134-6818-1
  • Amy de la Haye, Valerie Mendes, Twentieth Century Fashion , ISBN 0-500-20321-0
  • Joel Kaplan, Sheila Stowell, Theater and fashion: Oscar Wilde to the suffragettes , ISBN 0-521-41510-1
  • Frances Kennett: The Collectors' Book of Fashion , ISBN 0-517-54860-7
  • Don Lynch, Titanic: An Illustrated History , Hyperion 1993, ISBN 0-7868-8147-X
  • Geoffrey Marcus, The Maiden Voyage , ISBN 0-04-440263-5
  • Caroline Rennolds Milbank: Couture: The Great Designers , ISBN 0-941434-51-6

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Consideration: United States Law
  2. ↑ Sir Edmund Cosmo Duff Gordon (1862-1931) ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tbcs.org.uk
  3. ^ "Titanic" life jacket for 87,500 euros auctioned in: Mittelbayerische Zeitung on May 16, 2007
  4. ↑ Collector buys report of the "Titanic" sinking in: Spiegel Online from October 17, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Duff Gordon, Lucy Christiana
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sutherland, Lucille Christiana (maiden name); Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British couturier and designer
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH April 20, 1935
Place of death London