Influential Images: The Fashion Makers and Adri

Designer Adri photographed by Barbra Walz for The Fashion Makers: An Inside Look at America's Leading Designers by Bernadine Morris, Random House, 1978

For work and for pleasure, I collect old fashion history and business books. One of these books, which I found on Amazon, and which I’d very much suggest ordering if you can find it, is The Fashion Makers: An Inside Look at America’s Leading Designers, written by Bernadine Morris with photographs by Barbra Walz, and published in 1978. I’ve noticed it popping up on blogs like Barneys Fashion Director Amanda Brooks’ short-lived but great, I Love Your Style, and in my friend Jeremy’s zine, Garmento. Bernadine Morris was the senior fashion writer for the New York Times for 30 years, and I’m a great admirer of her insightful, business-minded and snarkless writing.

The Fashion Makers is a set of profiles of America’s greatest designers, including Adolfo, John Anthony, Geoffrey Beene, Lilly Daché, James Galanos, Charles James, Ralph Lauren, Bob Mackie, Pauline Trigere, Diane Von Furstenberg and many more. In a way, it’s the antithesis of what we’ve come to expect from a fashion coffee table type-book; the photos are all black and white, and they show designers either working, doing a favorite activity or with friends and family. The photos are not retouched and for that reason, they feel much more intimate. Morris’ profiles encompass her subjects’ industry histories and their design philosophies.

One of the designers whom Morris wrote about in the book, and that I wasn’t familiar with, was Adrienne Steckling-Coen, known as Adri. Adri grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri as a tall, lanky girl who fell in love with Claire McCardell’s sportswear designs.

“There are people in fashion who would consider Adri the inheritor of McCardell’s mantle as the leading exponent of soft, feminine, casual sportswear. Like her idol, Adri designs for herself. She makes clothes that she can feel comfortable wearing, clothes that are pretty but relaxed. Often they have an original twist”. (The Fashion Makers, Morris, Random House, 1978)

Adri’s history in the industry began at Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied design and transferred to the Parsons School of Design, graduating in 1957. She began working at B.H. Wragge, an NYC-based sportswear manufacturer whose fabrics were often designed by famous artists.

She founded her own company in 1966. Her early designs were wild and provocative, and resonated with the zeitgeist of the era.  I loved the description of one of the garments:

“She also made clear plastic raincoats that related to the designs of the dress underneath them. If both were striped diagonally, a plaid effect was formed with the raincoat was worn over the dress”. (The Fashion Makers, Morris, Random House, 1978)

Adri hotpant suit and shoes, 1967

As she evolved her design aesthetic, Adri turned out more practical fashions. She wanted her clothing to be easy to care for, and to serve a variety of shoppers. Her collection was produced in Petite, Small and Medium sizes for that purpose. Adri partnered with famous manufacturers and designers like Anne Fogarty, Paul Parnes, and Ben Shaw (a financial backer known as Mr. Seventh Avenue), Jones New York and Habitat Industries. She also designed soft jersey “leisurewear” for Royal Robes and sportswear for Jerry Silverman. Because she was longtime devotee to and critic for Parsons, a merit-based scholarship to the school was named after the designer in her honor. She won a Coty Award in 1982 and was the focus of a 1971 Smithsonian exhibit entitled, Innovative Contemporary Fashion: Adri and McCardell. I wish I could have seen it. She passed away in 2006.

Of all of the designers in The Fashion Makers, it was Adri whose career, design sense and attitude stuck with me most. I particularly liked these two quotes:

“There’s something useful about being a woman designing for women. You can test the style on yourself. You know what you want to wear, and if you are lucky you find other women who agree with you. An ivory tower is out of the question. You don’t think of clothes in abstract terms. You have to be realistic. I’d been wearing pants for a number of years – I love them, but I was getting tired of them – so I decided I would wear culottes. That gave me the convenience of pants but the feeling of a skirt. I turned out that appealed to other women too. I just didn’t decide ‘Let there be culottes.’” (The Fashion Makers, Morris, Random House, 1978)

“She believes that “designing is perfecting an idea” and that a designer’s collection should have a continuity from one season to another. The ideal is finding a look that adapts to changes and can be updated constantly, like Chanel’s or McCardell’s. Something that’s identifiable. I didn’t do that. I went all over the lot in the beginning, and I’m sorry now.” (The Fashion Makers, Morris, Random House, 1978)

1974 Adri sketch from Who's Who in Fashion by Anne Stegemeyer

Adri sketch, 1982

In these quotes, you get a sense of a designer who was talented but humble, and creative but sensible. They’re the qualities that best serve a designer or a fashion entrepreneur. I wondered after reading her profile, why Adri wasn’t as known a fashion icon as some of her peers. In a lovely tribute, journalist Barbara Cloud says, “real fashion fame eluded her.” Adri’s contemporaries, Halston, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, were dynamic brand-builders and fame-seekers. Perhaps Adri’s ‘real woman’ designs and ideology seemed less exciting or glitzy.

I’ll continue to share designer histories and profiles from The Fashion Makers, but hope you’ll look into Adri’s history and her creations. She sounded like the real deal.

Adri, photographed by Barbra Walz for The Fashion Makers: An Inside Look at America's Leading Designers, Morris, Random House, 1978