#12. Ben Brantley's WWD article on Pauline Trigère: "French Marlene Dietrich with a Bad Cold".

Ben Brantley's WWD article on Pauline Trigère

An invitation by Pauline’s daughter-in-law, Jane Tucker, to her home resulted in many wonderful surprises. Among the piles of photographs and documents Jane had made available for my research visit, I discovered a hard copy of an article published for WWD on March 12, 1980. While I’m reading this hilarious writeup of Pauline’s life, I was surprised to discover at the end of this article, the author was non-other than Mr. Ben Brantley. 

Renowned as the Chief Theatre Critic for The New York Times for over twenty years, Brantley was a reporter, editor, and Paris bureau chief for fashion industry publication WWD early in his career. A year after reading Ben Brantley’s article, while flipping through hundreds of photographs on the Getty Image site, I came across some photos of a young man attending a Trigère fashion show. Harry Potter-like youngster sitting on the stage of the Trigere showroom, it seemed out of character since most attendees are either clients or buyers. Since the first photo did not credit the name of the young man, I had no idea who or why he was photographed attending a Trigère fashion show. It was only many more pages later when more photos appeared with a credit caption that it was Ben Brantley reporting for WWD.

The article: “The Passions of Pauline” invoked a reader’s imagination of sitting next to Pauline in a taxicab. Her voice “...that’s low, rough-edged, and unmistakably Gallic, suggesting a French Marlene Dietrich with a bad cold.” “...Pauline Trigere —Seventh Avenue’s tailor par excellence for decades and a woman who, even for the duration of a 10-minute taxi ride, is unlikely to sit quietly on the sidelines.” 

“The flip side of Trigere charm is a pyrotechnic temper.”  

As described in Brantley's article on interviews with Gillis McGill, former model, and head of the Mannequin modeling agency. In addition, there were quotes by Lucie Porges, Porges being Pauline’s closest associate.  “Sure, I go into rages, but five minutes later, I can be perfectly happy telling a funny, dirty story.” “The same fever-pitched energy and constant thirst for outside stimuli that she brings to her job find their nighttime outlet in a seldom broken string of parties, dinners, jaunts to the theater, opera, and ballet. One recent weeknight found Trigère attending a symposium on beauty, a party honoring the Barbie doll, and dinner at the Palace, with a discussion on the ERA before an assembly of prominent businessmen scheduled for early the next morning.” 

This article enriched my findings as someone that knew Ms.Trigère not as an associate in the fashion industry but as someone describing a typical day of a very established fashion designer on an intimate level. I was inspired by the storytelling description bore out from attending Ms.Trigère's fashion shows and interviewing her numerous times. The article included a favorite story of Ms. Trigère:

“One pertinent story, which Trigere says is apocryphal, “although it’s a very good story”: A young man comes up to Trigere at a restaurant and introduces himself as the son of a valued Trigère customer. Trigère asks how her client is and learns she has died recently and was buried in her favorite Trigère dress. Trigère expresses condolences and then, after the young man has left, says to her companion: “You see, in a Trigère you can go anywhere.”