What is a good Jewish viscountess to do when she has a title but no money, an invitation to a party but no clothes and a pair of scissors but no sewing skills?
Make a poodle skirt, of course.
This, quite coincidentally, is exactly what Julie Lynn Charlotte did in late 1947, creating in the process a totem of midcentury material culture like the saddle shoe, the hula-hoop and the pink plastic lawn flamingo.
Ms. Charlotte, a New York native who died Sunday at 101 at her home in Tepoztlan, Mexico, was a Hollywood singer before her marriage in the mid-1940s to a viscount, or British nobleman. Fashion-conscious but hopeless with a needle, she was drawn out of necessity to a pattern for a fabulous skirt that didn’t involve sewing: take a large bag of solid color, cut it into a wide circle, and Decorate with beautiful appliqué numbers in contrasting colors. , poke a hole in the center and pop yourself in.
The result, the embellished circle skirt, was common throughout the 1950s, bought by women and, in particular, teenage girls. With its voluminous fabric that flared gracefully as the wearer moved, it was just the thing for a sock hip.
Over the years, the circle skirts of Ms. Charlotte and her many imitators were decorated with various illustrations, often containing small visual traditions. But because the most popular avatar of the dress sports images of poodles, all these skirts are commonly known as poodle skirts.
“When I was a teenager, every girl in the Western world wore a poodle skirt,” comedian Irma Bomback wrote in a 1984 column. She went on to describe it as “a skirt with enough fabric to cover a New Jersey with a big poodle attached to it.”
Born literally out of post-war abundance – the fabric is no longer in short supply – the poodle skirt seamlessly integrated with 1950s youth culture, a set of happy clothes that appeared to represent a carefree era. Never mind the Cold War, the skirt seemed to say: We’re going to rock around the clock.
Later, the poodle skirt became visual shorthand for the entire decade. Even now, the production of “Grease” or “Bye Bye Birdy” can be attributed with little or no evidence.
The daughter of Philip and Betty (Cohen) Egan, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Ms. Charlotte was born on October 26, 1922, in Shirley Egan, Manhattan.
When she was a child, her family moved to Southern California. There, her father, an electrician, and her mother, an embroiderer, plied their trade at Hollywood Studios.
“It was easy to be poor in a milder climate,” Ms. Charlotte said in 2017, at age 94, in an interview for the fatal story based on her singing career (“I still have the voice, by the way “); his unexpected stage appearance with the Marx Brothers (“I was so beautiful then”); Her penchant for marriage and romance (“I always loved someone“); and her work as a self-taught fashion designer.
Young Shirley’s school friends included entertainers such as the future Judy Garland, the future Anne Miller and the future Lana Turner. Possessing a fine soprano voice, she began taking voice lessons at age 13, determined to become an opera singer. “I was going to be the greatest Mozart connoisseur,” he said.
Because she thought Shirley was not an appropriate name for a diva, she adopted the professional name Julie Lane.
After graduating from Hollywood High School, he sang with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera and the Xavier Kgut Orchestra. During World War II, she accompanied the Marx Brothers on a tour of military bases across the state.
During his acting years, he created his own wardrobe. Because she refused to learn to sew (“I didn’t want to be like my mother,” she said), she hired a seamstress to realize her designs into fabric.
Ms. Charlotte had no shortage of “famous admirers,” she said, among them Harold Lloyd, Gary Cooper and Isaac Stern, the violinist.
He married four times, “with two millionaires, a royal count and a son of” – and here he paused for dramatic effect – “Baron.”
The first marriage, to the first millionaire, “didn’t really count,” Ms. Charlotte said. Divorced after three days.
After the war, she moved to Las Vegas with Philip Charlotte, an officer in the British Royal Navy. The son of a French father and an English mother, he was also, she learned only later, a viscount.
At her request, she gave up her career to live at home as a viscountess. Her husband got a job as a Hollywood film editor.
In December 1947, she was invited to a Hollywood Christmas party. She had nothing decent to wear and no money: her husband had recently lost his job.
A fairy godmother intervened in the person of Ms. Charlotte’s mother, who by then owned a children’s clothing factory. He gave his daughter a wide blanket of white felt.
Out came the scissors, and before long, Ms. Charlotte found herself in the center of the white circle skirt.
“I drilled with my brother’s slide rule: C = 2πr,” he said in 2017. She can hand stitch the Christmas trees in the background to look green.
“My mother had a cigar box full of little sticks that she used in her work,” he said. “They went on Christmas trees as decorations.”
The skirt was “a big hit” at the party, she recalled.
She made several identical skirts and took them to a boutique in Beverly Hills. They were sold.
After the holidays, the store requested a seasonal design. He created a tableau of dachshunds chasing each other around the skirt. Once the dachshund was sold, the shop suggested he turn his attention to poodles. French poodles were very popular at the time, and many customers owned them.
Poodles chased dachshunds.
Long ago, Ms. Charlotte was a poodle skirt factory. She designed skirts decorated with images of frogs and lily pads, scenes of Parisian streets, galloping horses, tulips, and champagne glasses and pink elephants, along with blouses, dresses, hats, and handbags.
By the early 1950s, her skirts were selling for about $35 a piece — some $400 in today’s money.
Because Ms. Charlotte’s business acumen, by her own account, was equal to her sewing, her factory first broke down. He told the United Press News Service in 1953, “Mother wore her diamond ring three weeks straight to help me get paid.”
But with the help of an investor — and orders from specialty department stores, including Bullock’s Wilshire in Los Angeles, Neiman Marcus in Dallas and Bergdorf Goodman in New York — his future was assured.
Today, Ms. Charlotte’s skirts are prized by vintage clothing collectors and can sell for hundreds of dollars each.
Lady Charlotte’s marriage to her viscount did not endure. At the height of his success as a designer, he was called to tea by his mother. “The more successful you are, the less successful you are,” she recalled her mother-in-law saying. “You are destroying my son.
Although Ms. Charlotte loved her husband dearly, she divorced him, she said, so he could get his life back.
Ms. Charlotte’s third marriage, to another millionaire, ended in divorce, as did her fourth, to the Mexican-born son of a German baron. He didn’t mind telling her, he discovered that he had been married to two women before and had never bothered to divorce.
Ms. Charlotte left no immediate family.
In later years, Ms. Charlotte, whose death was confirmed by her friend Carol Hopkins, created contemporary renditions of traditional Mexican wedding dresses. She lived in Tepoztlan, south of Mexico City, since the 1980s.
By the height of the flamboyant sixties, the miniskirt had played the poodle. But before that happened, a young woman was captured in a press photo that betrays the reach of Ms. Charlotte’s work.
The time was 1951, and the place was Ottawa, where the woman was attending a hostel at the home of the Governor General of Canada. At the age of 25, she had never seen a hook, and was tutored privately in the Mysteries before she began dancing.
The woman, dressed in a steel blue circle skirt by Ms. Charlotte emblazoned with hearts, flower branches and stylized figures of Romeo and Juliet, acquitted herself gracefully, according to news reports.
Her name was Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, and she would be known as Queen Elizabeth II from the following year.
Alex Traub Contributed to reporting.