Henry Rosenfeld Dies; Low-Cost Dress Maker

Henry Rosenfeld, a dress manufacturer who at his peak was producing 2.5 million inexpensive but fashionable garments a year for some of the nation’s leading department stores, died Feb. 5 in a New York City hospital. He was 75.

In 1942, at a time when fabric shortages had severely crippled the garment trade, Rosenfeld began a business with $40,000 and quickly parlayed it into a $30-million-a-year line he described as a “class-market dress at mass-market prices.” Women who could afford much more than his $9 to $25 dresses found themselves wearing them because of their style and workmanship.

He credited his ability as a salesman with freeing up sources of materials closed to others by the war. Those abilities were later chronicled in New Yorker, Time, Life and Look magazine profiles of the young entrepreneur.

Rosenfeld, a shipping clerk for a dress manufacturer who promised his mother that he would be a millionaire before he was 35 (he made it with months to spare), said the secret of his success was that he was “satisfied with 50 cents (profit)” per garment, as opposed to others who tried to extract $6 or $7 per dress.

In the 1960s, he lost interest in the dress business and started a line of luggage and a mail-order house still operated by his family.