From ‘Rags’ to French-Designed Separates
You could call it a rags-to-riches story.
When Brenda French began designing, she would knit long pieces of material to test color schemes. And when she wore them, she recalls, people would jokingly ask: “What’s that rag around your neck?”
But they would also ask to buy, and French obliged by selling her “rags” on the spot.
When she moved into volume production of genuine scarfs, she also moved up the ladder into prestigious stores, such as Robinson’s and Neiman-Marcus. And when she branched out into making hand-loomed separates, the garments often carried three-digit, non-rag price tags.
Her holiday/resort collection, for example, which she showed recently at Bonwit Teller, is priced from $65 to $400. It features her favorite rayon fabric (sometimes combined with cotton or with Lurex) worked into cleverly patterned skirts, sweaters, pants, coats, jackets and serapes.
Influenced by the the American Southwest (“being English, I love the whole cowboy-and-Indian idea”), the designer gives a Santa Fe twist to the collection in the form of desert-bright colors, fringed garments and Navajo-inspired prints. On hand to greet her public, the designer was up to some of her old tricks. By the end of the day, she had given away the scarf she was wearing.
Recently she got rid of something else--her original label, “French Rags,” in favor of the more upscale “Brenda French” logo. Although she had contemplated the move for some time (she even had new labels designed and ready for use), it took a call from the Lord & Taylor store in New York to make it happen.
Change of Name
Planning a “big promotion” of her garments, executives of the New York department store told her they hoped she wouldn’t be offended, but they weren’t too keen on the rags connotation. That’s when she made the change.
Of all the items in her collection, the one that expresses Brenda French best is a $400 jacket--a long cardigan with wide shoulders and shawl collar--woven of lambs’ wool, nylon and 50% Angora.
She calls the cardigan “my answer to the blazer,” and she frequently wears a fuchsia one with a geometrically patterned black-and-white matching sweater and skirt--a look she hails as “the suit of the ‘80s.”
Women, she says, “design for themselves.” In her case, she is designing for women who have children, who work and who travel. She lengthened the cardigan eight inches and gave it two low-placed pockets to have somewhere to put her hands when she can’t think of what else to do with them.
Knits, especially rayon knits, will be the salvation of executive women who have been saddled with “female versions of men’s clothing,” she claims.
Able to go anywhere in her knit garments, including the finest restaurants in New York, she says, French would like to see males throw off their ties and jackets in favor of knits.
