Simpson, Adele Smithline

(b. 28 December 1903 in New York City; d. 23 August 1995 in Greenwich, Connecticut), fashion designer and chairperson of Adele Simpson, Inc., a Seventh Avenue manufacturer and wholesaler of ready-to-wear women’s clothes.

Adele Smithline was the youngest of five daughters born to Jacob Smithline, a tailor, and Ella Bloch, a homemaker, both immigrants from Riga, Latvia. She lived with her family at 27 East 69th Street in New York City. After graduating from Wadleigh High School in 1920, she enrolled in the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and received her degree in 1924.

Simpson’s design career was launched in 1923, when she was hired by her sister Anna’s employer, Sigmund Kaski, a partner in the New York firm of Ben Gershel, Inc., a manufacturer of coats and suits. Initially an assistant, she became a designer in 1924, earning a salary of $30,000. She was made head designer in 1926, but she moved to another New York firm, William Bass, Inc., in 1927 as its chief designer. She married Wesley Simpson, a textile executive, on 8 October 1930. They resided in a townhouse on East 79th Street in New York City and a country estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, where they raised their two children.

As more than a third of America’s garment manufacturers went out of business between 1929 and 1933, Simpson was fortunate to be employed. U.S. manufacturers benefited from the new, lower import duties during the Depression, and Paris couturiers, unable to compete, enabled American designers to dictate fashion, albeit with department store labels rather than those of designers. Dorothy Shaver, president of Lord and Taylor, a New York department store, changed this practice in 1932, when she began a promotion of clothing with the designers’ names on the labels. Adele Simpson was one of the first designers in the promotion. In 1934 Simpson became chief designer at Mary Lee Fashions, at 530 Seventh Avenue, where she designed under her own label. When the owner Alfred W. Lasher retired in 1949, she purchased the company, which she ran with Eleanor Graham, long-time designer associate, and Joseph Immerman, one of the most famous production experts in the wholesale dress industry at the time. She changed the company’s name to Adele Simpson, Inc., and was its chief designer and president. In 1978 she stopped designing but stayed on as chairman, passing the management of the firm to her daughter, Joan, and son-in-law Richard Raines, and left the designing to Donald Hobson. She retired in 1985. During her active employment at the company, Simpson oversaw the operation of twelve factories, selecting fabrics, designing many of the clothes, and presenting the annual collection to buyers. She was even one of the first to present her fashions on tours of midwestern and southern cities.

Simpson was recognized for her designs as well as for her use of fabrics. She was the recipient of the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award in 1946 for distinguished service in the field of fashion and the Coty Fashion Award in 1947. The 1950s brought her further recognition with the first Cotton Council Award in 1953, for using cotton, even for full-skirted evening gowns, and making it part of a high-fashion statement, and in 1958 with a salute from the International Silk Association for her fine use of silk surah in evening dresses and “doeskin,” a silk and wool blend, in suits. She was twice the recipient of the Woolens and Worsteds of America Citation.

One of her most notable fashions of the 1950s was the cotton chemise dress she called the “skimmer,” because it “skims over the woman … touching here, releasing there, involving her body-in-movement as part of the design.” This dress was Simpson’s adaptation of a beltless French design and was worn either with a belt behind for a tighter fit or a belt in front for a looser one. She thought that a woman would want to feel some fit and thus stressed inner construction with built-in bodices. Other preferred designs were the town costume, a dress with matching coat, and a suit with lining and blouse of the same fabric. Her clothes were totally coordinated, such as a red and tweed suit paired with “tweed” beads, bar pins she designed, and necklaces for her collarless suits or dresses. She chose hats, gloves, shoes, and even nylon stockings for a totally seamless effect. She even consulted with accessory manufacturers regarding colors and fabrics before selecting her own.

Simpson’s phrase “pace, race, space” captured the need for women to move fast, unencumbered by pinched waists and accentuated busts, and she designed clothes that women could step into rather than put on over their heads. Her styles included zouave skirts, slenderized trapeze coats, and luxurious Venetian brocade empire-styled dresses in blue and red, inspired by carnations for pattern and color. She was proud that all her fabrics were made in America, even the “Venetian brocade.”

In 1964 Simpson was the first manufacturer of the Givenchy special collection for Bloomingdale’s. Unlike her friend Pauline Trigère, who objected to Parisian couture setting the styles for the United States and to the pirating of styles by other designers, Simpson also made American ready-to-wear interpretations of French haute couture, and did not object to being copied herself: “You might just as well go out of business if they stop copying you. It really means that you aren’t making clothes that are good enough to steal.” Cheap copies, she maintained, could not duplicate the effect of fine fabrics and workmanship.

The 1970s marked a return to elegance but the midcalflength skirt posed a problem for American designers, who were reluctant to follow the Parisian trend, finding the longer lengths dowdy. Simpson compromised by adopting the “midi” for evening but keeping daytime dresses shorter. From November 1978 to February 1979, 104 of her costumes were displayed at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. On that occasion she also lectured on how she adapted exotic costumes to contemporary clothing: a Yemenite bride’s outfit into tunic and pants; a Turkish caftan robe into hot pants; a Kenyan leopard-printed chiffon into a miniskirt. Neither avant-garde, like Yves St. Laurent, nor outré, like Rudi Gernreich, Simpson nonetheless thought “fashion should not make mice or wrens of women.” She said, “Color may be a shout or a whisper … monochrome or a blaze of pattern … [it] is the mood of design,” Simpson said, maintaining that color had to be suited to the type and shape of the dress—“inevitable color”—whereas fabric was “a means of relaxing or tensing a line … fluid or firm.” She described a black-dyed Argentine lamb—broadtail processed—“as fragile as a butterfly’s wing—but … tough and practical.” Her fabrics, usually lightweight and sensual, were mostly “pure,” rather than synthetic, during the 1950s and 1960s, but in the 1970s and 1980s she used viscose, nylon, and acetate for her designs, as did the Parisian couturiers.

Simpson’s husband died in 1976. In 1978 she ceased to design but stayed on as chairperson of the board. She retired in 1985 and died of a heart attack in Greenwich, Connecticut, where she is buried.

Expressions of Simpson’s philosophy of fashion include, “fashion is failure if not functional,” “evolution, not revolution,” and “know what your customer is doing and thinking.” She had three criteria for her collections: trend-consciousness but with taste; appeal to men; and investment value. Frequently described as ladylike, her designs were moderately priced for their category. Her clientele included the first ladies Mamie Eisenhower, Patricia Nixon, Lady Bird Johnson, Rosalynn Carter, and Barbara Bush. Her designs were also sold to the best retailers nationwide, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, Bergdorf Goodman, Garfinckel’s, Neiman Marcus, Meyer’s, and Sakowitz. She combined design with marketability, aware of her responsibility for keeping her factories functioning.

The Simpson collection, including costumes, books, scrap-books of newspaper clippings, photos of designs, fabrics, and 1,500 artifacts, was given to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. The printed fashion items are in the Special Collections Division of its library. Information about Simpson’s career appears in Catherine Houck, Fashion Encyclopedia: An Essential Guide to Everything You Need to Know about Clothes (1982), and Eleanor Lambert, World of Fashion (1976). Robert Riley’s 1001 Treasures of Design is a catalogue of the 104 items shown in the 1978 exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Robert Riley’s video of Adele Simpson’s lecture-fashion show (16 Oct. 1978) reveals how the designer adapted foreign costumes to current fashion. An obituary is in the New York Times (24 Aug. 1995).

Barbara L. Gerber