The couture designer Madame Carven is unfamiliar to even many enthusiasts of fashion history. Born Carmen de Tommaso, her design name Marie-Louise Carven, or Madame Carven, was known to French women since 1945 when she opened her salon in Paris offering fashions designed to show off the beauty of petite women.
At the time, Paris fashions were dominated by men such as Christian Dior, Lucien Lelong, Jacques Fath, and Pierre Balmain, who were eager to prove that couture was back after the war and still relevant. Madame Carven brought a different outlook to fashion which valued real women over muses and idealized figures. Like many other female designers before her and alongside her, she made clothes as a woman for other women. Madame Carven took as her starting point petite women like herself and her friends, understanding that size and proportion are integral to clothes that flatter. Both Edith Piaf and Leslie Caron wore her clothes. In 1950 with the launch of her pret-a-porter line she brought her aesthetic to a wider customer base.
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Her designs exude charm resulting from a care for elegance with a note of playfulness. She had a good eye for proportion and balance in a silhouette. Her approach is encapsulated in the very first dress that she sent out, a mint green and white striped full-skirted frock. Called ma griffe, or “my signature,” (also the name of her 1946 scent) the dress expressed a fresh, optimistic femininity, exemplifying the Carven aesthetic. The design elements, however, are cleverly employed to address the petite body. Her use of vertical stripes and open V-neckline elongate the body while the nipped-in waist gives womanly definition to a small frame. Almost every Carven collection since has featured a similar green and white dress as a “signature” statement.
In a 1950 Women’s Wear Daily article, Madame Carven explained her focus on petites, stating, “I decided to make haute couture outfits in my size because I was too short to wear the creations of the top couturiers, who only ever showed their designs on towering girls.” Carven herself was 5’1”. That she patented the first push-up bra in France suggests that she understood how much petite women benefit from a defined silhouette.
Carven’s designs were less fussy and stiff than some other couturiers. She eschewed the complicated formality of much haute couture. Instead, she brought an easy-care, happy sensibility to couture that fit the modern woman’s desires for clothes that were practical and pretty. The influence of ready-to-wear, washable fabrics such as synthetics, and sportswear are evident in Madame Carven’s style. Cottons were featured regularly in her collections. Fabrics such as broderie anglaise and pink gingham were also favored materials at the couture house. A 1946 editorial in American Vogue shows her sports-inspired designs of ski-style pants and lace-up ballet slippers.
Madame Carven was also inspired by her travels around the world to places such as Mexico and Thailand, often incorporating themes and fabrics from the places she visited. She even showed her collections in other countries to build an international clientele.
To further her brand, she engaged in many marketing and business endeavors, licensing her name in approximately 60 different ventures from a juniors line to fragrances., In 1950 she created a collection inspired by the film Gone With The Wind to coincide with its belated release in France. She also designed uniforms for various airlines, Eurostar staff and traffic wardens in Paris. Carven designed costumes for eleven films, including the classic suspense thriller, Les Diaboliques.
Though Madame Carven retired in 1993, her brand continued with different designers at the helm. In 2009 Guillaume Henry was appointed designer at Carven bringing the brand back to the forefront of fashion. The same year Marie-Louise Carven was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal for her contribution to French culture. Until the current season, the designers for Carven have been Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud, though they have announced their departure.
Unfortunately, the new iterations of the Carven label no longer cater to petite women. Many women are petite and most are not tall. Outside the fashion world, being petite has long been considered desirable in a woman. Yet “petite” lines of clothing today are the domain of mainstream workwear-friendly American retailers such as Ann Taylor and J. Crew. Such petite lines, however, only shorten the length of pants and shirts of their “regular” designs. Petite women today are implicitly told via market positioning that they are out of bounds in the high fashion arena. Madame Carven designed to specifically flatter petite women while still offering high fashion styles. Let’s hope that with a new designer the label will return to its heritage. Where is the next Madame Carven?
Further Reading
Picken, Mary Brooks and Dora Loues Miller, Dressmakers of France, New York: Harper, 1956.
Stegemeyer, Anne, Who’s Who in Fashion. New York: Fairchild Publications, 1988.
