Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon
Lady Lucy Christiana Duff Gordon (actually Lucille Christiana Sutherland, born June 13, 1863 in London, † April 20, 1935 ibid ) was a British fashion designer and designer of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Life
Lucy Christiana was the eldest daughter of the engineer Douglas Sutherland (1838-1865) and his wife Elinor Saunders ( 1841-1937 ). Her younger sister was the famous writer and screenwriter Elinor Glyn ( 1864-1943 ). After the early death of her father her mother moved with her daughters, first to Toronto, Canada, by her second husband, the family moved in 1872 then to the island of Jersey. The education of the daughters was closely monitored by their parents. Lucy was considered a precocious and highly intelligent.
In 1881, the only 18 -year-old Lucy married a Scottish businessman James Stuart Wallace. The marriage was not a good star and after only six years ago this was divorced. From this relationship came to a daughter, Esme Sutherland Wallace (1885-1973), shows that later Hardinge Goulburn Giffard (1880-1943), the only son of the British Lord Chancellor Hardinge Giffard (1823-1921), married. From this marriage again was a son, John Anthony Hardinge Giffard (1908-2000), out.
To earn and her daughter 's livelihood, Lucy opened a tailor shop and put Lingerie, Accessories, day and evening dresses in a romantic and feminine style. The late 1890s, her fashion atelier The Maison Lucile on the Hanover Square in the City of London was the place for high society. Her clients included, among others, Mary Pickford, Gaby Deslys, Lily Elsie, Gertie Millar, Margot Asquith, Duchess of Oxford and Mary, Duchess of York ( later Queen Mary ). Lady Duff Gordon was also the first fashion designer who was showing off the clothes of several mannequins on the catwalk her clients. In 1896 she met the Scottish landowner and sportsman Sir Cosmo Edmund Duff Gordon know, who introduced them into society and financially supported. In June 1900, she married in Edinburgh. In the following years she opened additional branches of their haute couture house in New York City (1910 ), Paris ( 1911) and Chicago (1915 ).
In 1917, the New York advertising agent, Otis Wood sued the fashion designer Lady Duff Gordon for breach of contract. The plaintiff had purchased the rights to the marketing of their label The Maison Lucile two years ago and promised her half of all income. At the same time Lady Duff Gordon began to design a collection for Macy's department stores, but without involving Wood in the profits from it. So they broke " supposedly" the agreement with Otis Wood, whereupon he filed a lawsuit against breach of contract in court. This, under the chairmanship of Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, the action hit from however.
Together with her husband, Lady Duff Gordon was among the first-class passengers on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic here. In Cherbourg, France, the couple went with her secretary, Laura Mabel Francatelli, on board. After the collision, the luxury liner with an iceberg on April 14 against 23:40 clock and its demise at 2:20 clock, fashion designer, her husband and Francatelli in a lifeboat with nine other people, which was designed for 40 passengers, of rescued the crew of the RMS Carpathia. In the later studies, they were questioned as witnesses.
In the early 1920s broke her fashion empire and she wrote as a columnist and fashion critic for various fashion magazines. In the late 1920s she became ill with breast cancer. After her husband's death on April 20, 1931, she withdrew more and more from the public. Lady Duff Gordon died on April 20, 1935, exactly four years after the death of her husband, from the effects of pneumonia in a London nursing home.
In the Titanic film version of 1997, she was portrayed by Rosalind Ayres.