FASHION: CHARLES KLEIBACKER
FASHION ICON SHARES HIS JOURNEY
INTERVIEWED BY CORDELIA ROBINSON
IMAGES COURTESY OF THE COLUMBUS MUSEUM OF ART
PORTRAIT BY SCOTT CUNNINGHAM
Legendary fashion designer Charles Kleibacker currently serves as adjunct curator of design for the Columbus Museum of Art. His coconspirator for local exhibitions and collections for CMA and The Ohio State University’s Historic Costume and Textiles Collection over the past three decades, Cordelia Robinson, coaxed Kleibacker into the interview chair to share his journey with CMH.
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
CK: I was born in Cullman, Alabama, population about 6,000, in 1921. From an early age, I learned about retailing from the family-owned department store and cotton gin down the block.
From there, I attended Notre Dame and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1943 with a degree in journalism. I became a newspaper reporter for the Birmingham Age-Herald, with part-time work in advertising at a Sears department store.
I left Alabama in 1945 for New York City to pursue a graduate degree in retailing at New York University, Wall Street campus. While studying there, I worked at Gimbels department store in the advertising department, which was led by Bernice Fitz-Gibbon. In the initial interview with Fitz-Gibbon, I mentioned I was brought up in Alabama.
“I never liked hiring anyone from the South – to me they are all pale, languid and lazy.”
– BERNICE FITZ-GIBBON, Gimbels
I started in the proof room, graduated to production, then to different areas of copywriting. I am proud to say that I dispelled her belief. In her 1951 best-selling book, Macy’s, Gimbels, and Me, Fitz-Gibbon gives me credit, referring to me as “industrious.”
MAKING A MOVE
CK: I moved from copy writing to retail – and to the other side of the country in 1948. In San Francisco, I worked for Robert Kirk, a women’s specialty store. While there, I interviewed to work with my mother’s favorite performer – Hildegarde (an incomparable singer, pianist, night club entertainer and comedienne of the day). I joined her entourage in 1948 and toured the United States and Paris for the next four years. I think I got the job because I had a station wagon.
I first travelled to Paris for three months in 1950 with Hildegarde and Anna Sosenko, where Hildegarde was to do three concerts in Paris at the Theatre des Champs Elysees; to Luxembourg for an appearance – Pearl Mesta being the U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg; then on to London for one month at the Savoy Hotel.
THE AH-HA MOMENT
CK: For Hildegarde’s appearances in Paris, Anna wanted new Paris clothes for her. Three (fashion) houses were decided upon: Dior, Balmain and Bruyère. Hildegarde now being a customer at Dior, I – as a member of her entourage – was welcomed to view the daily showing at three in the afternoon whenever I could get away from work. I went – often! This was the turning point for me.
The beauty of the Dior salons, the clothes, the models, the whole atmosphere – I was mesmerized. Then and there I made up my mind – this is what I’ve always wanted to be, a designer of women’s clothing, clothing that has merit.
Back in New York after three months abroad, I gave Hildegarde and Anna proper notice and began the work of a beginning designer who had no background other than an eye for meaningful women’s clothes that would last in the long run.
LEARNING THE CRAFT
CK: The years between 1951 until 1960, when I opened the Kleibacker studio, were nine years of ups and downs, with an accent on the downs.
I sailed for France in 1954. In Paris, I presented samples of my work and secured a job with Lanvin-Castillo, as one of two junior designers. I didn’t sketch – I worked up samples in muslin on dress forms. Castillo would come in to review them and tell me, “Continue with this one and this one. Scratch that one.” Though employed as a designer, I also studied the skills of those employed in the workrooms – the cutters, the finishers and the like. This was rather unorthodox at the time. And what I learned from those craftsman was extremely valuable.
Upon returning to New York in 1958, I freelanced for Nettie Rosenstein, who was known as the “mother” of the little black luncheon dress. Eventually, in 1960, I opened Kleibacker Studio.
IN OTHER PEOPLE’S WORDS
CK: I was making dresses. I was selling dresses. I finally reached the buyer at Henri Bendel to secure an appointment. Gene Rosendale and Coco Hashim came to my studio.
“Dresses? That’s the last thing we need.”
– GENE ROSENBERG, Henri Bendel Couture Buyer (1964)
– She placed the first significant order.
“Charles had a studio and was making clothes for women in the way a couture house would make them. Specialized in the most incredible bias cuts. Wool crepe, cut on the bias, fitted snugly, flared on the bottom, completely lined in silk shantung, also cut on the bias. All the stitching hidden – hemlines and everything. All by hand. High level of couture for ready-to-wear. The dresses were sublime. These dresses were all about the feminine figure. You wore the dress. It moved with you. It was so carefully cut on the bias. It was like wearing nothing. The garments just floated.”
– COCO HASHIM, retired fashion executive for The Limited,
John Wanamaker, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s,
Henri Bendel, Bonwitt Teller
“He’s the master of the fluid line. Charles Kleibacker knows about clothes that show the body. He does it with bias, with seaming that makes a dress fit like a second skin.”
– WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY (1969)
CK: The label sold especially well at New York’s Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel; to specialty stores Nan Duskin in Philadelphia; Martha in New York and Palm Beach, and Stanley Korshak in Chicago, and to private clients.
“Fashion experts who know Charles Kleibacker say that he has a ‘biased view’ because he is among a handful of American designers who really know how to cut clothes on the bias. Young Kleibacker has been singled out by the editor of Women’s Wear Daily for special attention as one of America’s real designing talents who practices the art of real dressmaking. A former designer for both Nettie Rosenstein and Lanvin-Castillo in Paris, his afternoon dresses are mostly of Bianchini crepes and satins with special treatments at necklines, superbly fitted midriffs (thanks to a network of bias darts) and draped or bias-swingy skirts.”
– RUBYE GRAHAM, Philadelphia Enquirer (1962)
Private clientele included Mrs. Richard Nixon when she was First Lady, Dr. Mathilde Krim, Dolores Hawkins Phelps, Norma Dana, Rebekah Harkness, Mrs. Alfred Drake and her daughter Samantha, Hildegarde, Diahann Carroll, Mary Travers, Lisa MacGuigan Moseley, Cynthia Lasker and Ruth Lewisohn Felden.
“A great individualist among the American fashion designers is certainly Charles Kleibacker, whose ultra-simple, bias-cut black crepes, and the marvelous, flowing blond cape over a long powder-blue crepe dinner dress, stood out with the same distinction as a Mme Grès Collection in Paris.”
– EUGENIA SHEPPARD, New York Post (1972)
TRANSITION
CK: Despite the kudos and the acclaim, it was not easy for me to make a decent profit on the Kleibacker designs. I now feel the intensity (and the hardships involved) in working on timelessly designed clothes in beautiful fabrics with an engineered construction I gloried in. Working with important companies that had an exploratory attitude in their rise to fame was my good fortune. Somehow we meshed.
In the late 1960s, I worked at the DuPont Company with scientists and engineers in the fiber area to develop new commercially viable fabrics. The 1970s found me in association with Vogue magazine (thanks to a recommendation from DuPont), promoting fabrics through Kleibacker presentations around the country.
“The drawing power of the Charles Kleibacker road show for DuPont’s Qiana (fabric) was considerable – even greater than anticipated. He attracted standing-room-only crowds.”
– FABRIC NEWS (1971)
Through the remainder of the 1970s, I embarked on nationwide tours for American Silk Mills promoting silk fabrics, with a wardrobe made from Vogue patterns in American Silk Mills’s silks, and my explanations to home sewers of how to get a better fit and how to employ some couture techniques.
Those led to tours for the Taubman Company, with shows in the Taubman malls around the country. Themes were: “Then and Now,” and for the second tour, “Clothes Worn by Famous People.” During the same period, I was taken on by the prestigious W. Colston Leigh Lecture Bureau, to do presentations related to the garment industry, primarily to women’s clubs.
The association with academia through the years combined a special love and good fees. My work as a visiting designer to the fashion department at Mount Mary College, Milwaukee, and Sister Aloyse, from 1968 to 2001, was a truly special association.
Still, I had my studio in New York, where my team of 25 – at its height – prepared samples and fastidiously filled orders for exclusive ready-to-wear retailers. Coming to Columbus changed that.
COMING TO COLUMBUS
CK: I came to The Ohio State University in the fall of 1984 for one quarter as a visiting professor in the Department of Textiles and Clothing, College of Home Economics (later Human Ecology), and became designer-in-residence in 1985, to build a Historic Costume and Textiles Collection for the university. I closed my studio in New York in 1986 and committed myself to the collection.
We applied my experience from the tours and my own shows to fashion in the exhibitions. Exhibitions continue to be an excellent way to draw attention to the collection, to connect with the community and to educate the casual and serious students of garments and fashion. They are a lot of work, and a lot of fun. One of my favorites was “Real to Real” in 1993, cocurated by Corde, which featured pieces by Adrian and Irene, who not only were the designers for the big studios, but also designed for department stores. Real people could wear their deisgns. These pieces were collected by people who realized the value of the works before the market appreciated them. And I have relationships with these talented people, who help me bring together these exhibitions.
I left the university in 1995 with emeritus status. Now, I am completing my eighth year at the Columbus Museum of Art as adjunct curator of design. The most recent exhibition here was “Class Act,” which closed in June. Now, I am working with the Fashion Institute of Technology for an exhibition that opens in November called “American Beauty: Aesthetics and Innovation in Fashion,” featuring Rodarte, Halston and Claire McCardell.
WHY THE BIAS TOWARD BIAS?
Through the years during which Kleibacker designed – the 1960s – there was a generational shift and a relaxing of structure in garments. At the same time, there was an increase in body-consciousness, with a younger, more athletic figure proposed as the fashionable ideal. Also during this period, a revolution of fabrics such as crepe de chine, jerseys and others that cling more closely to the body occured. Ingenious bias cuts enhance the effects of these types of fabric.
“In the late 1920s, fabrics were tipped at an angle, turned on point. The tensions of the warp and wep threads are subverted by the fact that you have this fretwork that is forming a diamond pattern that stretches and is more elastic. It allows for a very sensual drape over any contour. Think of the Art Deco sinuous line of the evening gown: those are all expressions of the understanding of the bias.”
– HAROLD KODA, curator-in-charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
“At Madeleine Vionnet’s (queen of the bias) workshop in Paris, finishers made adjustments to the garments to make the ripples of the hem even. This requires a fitting. Charles was making ready-to-wear garments but as a perfectionist, still wanted to make the ripples even. So he developed a technique of incorporating center front and center back seams in his designs.”
“The garments reveal a simple silhouette, but the cut is very complex. Many of the designs have just three pattern pieces. And yet, the dresses are just amazing.”
“He was always very aware of the woman who would be wearing his dress. And how he could make her feel and look her best. So the garments fit properly everywhere. Nothing is exposed. Everything secure and well fit.”
– JOYCELYN FALSKEN, PHD, Manager Collections,
The Ohio State University’s Historic Costume & Textiles Collection, Geraldine Schottenstein Wing (2009)
VIEW CORDELIA ROBINSON’S CMH CONTRIBUTOR BIO
VIEW CHARLES KLEIBACKER’S CMH CONTRIBUTOR BIO
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