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Henry a la Pensee was a French fashion house. The house operated several high end boutiques that were set up like department stores. The stores sold accessories, clothing (sportswear, elegant knitwear, silk blouses etc.), objects, and gifts from 1800 – 1960s. The house based in Paris, France opened many shops throughout France. In 1938 the house opened a shop in New York City and for that purpose Henry a la Pensee, Inc., a New York corporation was formed.

From United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals documents dated April 10, 1957, Patent Appeal No. 6226. :

“Beginning in 1940, as a result of the war in Europe and after the sinking of the steamship Champlain, the New York company was unable to obtain goods from France, and accordingly began to market goods of its own using labels bearing the words “Henry a la Pensee, Inc.,” with “Inc.” in relatively small letters, and this it continued to do. Prior to that time, it would appear that the labels on the goods sold by the New York company, being imported from the French company, read “Henry a la Pensee, Paris” and that after 1940 they read “Henry a la Pensee, Inc.” when used on merchandise otherwise obtained.”

Written by Sweet Melissa’s Vintage

Edward Abbott was the clothing business for which Wilson Folmar was head designer, 1957 – 1964.

See also: Wilson Folmar

Written by Fuzzylizzie

Abercrombie & Fitch was started in 1892 in New York City by David Abercrombie as Abercrombie & Co. His products consisted of outdoor gear, such as camping and hunting equipment, which he sold to professional explorers and avid outdoorsmen. In 1900 he was joined in the business by Ezra Fitch, who had the money for expansion. In 1904 the store moved to Broadway, and the company incorporated as Abercrombie & Fitch Company.

The partners disagreed as to the direction the company should take, and so Abercrombie sold his part of it to Fitch in 1907. Fitch greatly expanded the scope of the store, adding a large mail order catalog, and giving the store itself an outdoorsy feel, with even a campfire blazing. In 1913, Fitch moved again, this time near the fashion center of Fifth Avenue, and he began to carry a line of women’s sports clothing.

Fitch retired in 1928, but the company continued to thrive, buying the Von Lengerke & Antoine sporting goods store in Chicago and other sporting goods stores. They were probably the largest sporting goods store in the world. In the 1950s, new stores were opened in San Francisco and several seasonal stores were opened in resort areas, and the Von Lengerke & Antoine property in Chicago was changed to Abercrombie & Fitch. But by the late 60s the business was in financial trouble, and bankruptcy was declared in 1977. It was acquired by Oshman’s, another sports store.

The big change came in 1988, when Abercrombie and Fitch was bought by The Limited. They set out to change the company to a mall chain, with a target market of teenagers and college students. The concept was successful, and stores were opened all over the country. The Limited sold off their interest in the late 90s. Since then, the company has been known for their sexy catalogs and store environments.

Written by Fuzzylizzie

Abraham & Straus was a department store, founded in 1865 by Joseph Wechsler and Abraham Abraham. The store was located in Brooklyn, New York, and was known as Wechsler & Abraham. In 1893, Wechler’s share of the company was bought by the Straus family, who also owned shares in Macy’s. The store then became known as Abraham & Straus, or simply, A&S. During the 1910s, the Straus family separated their interest in the two stores, with Abraham & Straus going to one branch of the family, and Macy’s to the other.

In 1929, A&S joined with Bloomingdales, Filene’s and Lazarus to form Federated Department Stores, Inc. Through the depression, A&S managed to stay open by cutting employee pay and through creative scheduling of employee hours. As a result, no A&S employees lost their jobs due to the economic crisis of the 1930s.

Through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Abraham & Straus expanded into different markets, opening stores throughout the greater New York city area.

In 1994, Federated Department Stores bought the bankrupt Macy’s, and combined them with A&S. In 1995, the Abraham & Straus name was dropped, and the stores were renamed as Macy’s. The large A&S flagship store in Brooklyn is still open as Macy’s.

Written by Fuzzylizzie

See Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America

The House of Adair made beaded dresses in France for export to the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Their production peaked in 1924-25.

Written by coutureallurevintage.com

Edie Adams, (1927 – 2008) was a talented American businesswoman, singer, actress and comedian.

She originally wore James Galnaos but loved to re create things and started a line of her own in her later years called EDIAD and also Bonham

Written by janilyn

Adelaar Blouse Company was founded by brothers Emil, Maurice, and Bernard Adelaar in 1934 in Chicago but transplanted to New York in 1945 where it was easier to find jobbers (subcontractor manufacturers). Formally known as Adelaar Brothers Inc., they produced primarily women’s tailored blouses, but also created separates and occasionally dresses and lightweight suits. The blouses were designed by Maurice but tailored by different jobbers using the patterns, materials and notions supplied by Adelaar. The company was at its height of production from the late 1940s to late 1960s when women’s tailored blouses were popular. Foreign competition, rising U.S. labour costs, and changing tastes in fashion in the 1970s lead to the company’s slow demise. The company closed in 1986.

Written by Fashion History Museum, Cambridge, Ontario

Adidas was founded by Adi Dassler, who had been making sports shoes in Germany since the 1920s. The company was started in 1947, and the name Adidas – a shortened form of Dessler’s name – was given to the company in 1948. The next year he registered the company’s trademark, the Three Stripes.

Adidas started producing sports clothing in 1967.

In 2005 Adidas aquired Reebok, making Adidas the second largest sportswear manufacturer worldwide. As of 2005, yearly revenue was over $8.4 billion.

Written by Fuzzylizzie

See vintage Adidas from VFG members on Etsy (paid link)

W.F. / Fred (Wilhelm Alfred) Adlmüller (1909-1990) was born in Nuremberg, Bavaria, trained as a cook and worked a few years in one of his father’s restaurants. He went to Vienna in 1929 with the purpose to learn more about the restaurant business. Instead, he found a job with the fashion boutique “Ludwig Zwieback & Brüder”, thanks to the costume designer at Vienna’s State Opera, who had recognized his talent. In 1931 he went to work at “Tailors, Stone & Blyth”, another fashion house.

At first he worked in the men’s department, and then started expanding the women’s fashion department, not only using his talent to copy couture designs, but also by designing after his own ideas. He started working on his first couture collection in 1934 and starting in 1936 he also designed costumes for theatre and opera, in Vienna and abroad. Adlmüller didn’t serve in WWII because of his health, but stayed on at the company after the original Jewish owners, Ignaz Sass and his wife, had to leave and a German owner took over. Thanks to his good connections with the Soviets in Vienna, he was able to present his first post-war collection in Autumn 1945, and in 1946 he received Austrian citizenship.

The original owners of Stone & Blyth came back after the war, and first partnered with him as “Stone & Blyth Nachfolger”. Later Adlmüller bought them out and started his own company in 1950. From the late 1940s he also designed costumes for Austrian movies. His salon remained located where Stone & Blyth had already been – at Palais Esterhazy on Kärtnerstrasse 41 in Vienna. From the 1930s until 1973 there was also a boutique in Bad Gastein and, from after the war until 1973, one in Munich.

A perfume, “Eau de Vienne”, was launched in the 1950s. In 1958 he won a prize for the best hostess uniform at the Expo in Brussels. Fred Adlmüller’s fashion was classic couture, often evening wear, worn by stars, presidents’ wives and even royalty. He also made the tailcoats for all the Austrian presidents. He was a professor at the university of applied arts from 1973 to 1979, teaching the fashion master class. In 1985 he sold the main part of his business to the lingerie company Palmers.

Adlmüller died in Vienna in 1990 and is buried at Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof. The last of his creations were auctioned off in January 1991 at Dorotheum in Vienna, and the salon on Kärtnerstrasse continued on until 2002 under the ownership of Palmers.

Adolfo (Sardina) (1933-2021) began his career as a milliner. After an apprenticeship with Balenciaga as a teenager, he moved to New York in 1948 and became an apprentice milliner at Bergdorf Goodman. He worked as a designer for milliner Erik Braagaard in the early 1950s and in 1953 was named head designer at Emme, where he received two awards for his millinery designs—a Coty “young designer” award in 1955, and a Neiman Marcus award, shared with Emme, in 1959. As widely praised as his collections for Emme were, he felt he was not receiving due credit there (his name never appeared on the label) and left in February 1962. Later that year, he opened his own millinery house with a $10,000 loan from Bill Blass.

In 1963 he launched a bridge line, Adolfo Réalités, and a less expensive line, Adolfo II; though he designed the hats for these lines, unlike those for his custom label, they were produced by an outside company. Some of Adolfo’s hats during the early 1960s were designed to accompany the clothing of Norman Norell.

Not long after opening his own millinery house, Adolfo began to design clothing to complement the hats his models wore, and by the mid 1960s his celebrity clients ranged from the Duchess of Windsor, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Betsy Bloomingdale to Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Nancy Reagan (who wore a red Adolfo dress, currently in the Smithsonian, to her husband’s second inaugural ball). His custom clothing was available both in his salon and in the Adolfo boutique at Saks Fifth Avenue.

Though by the 1980s he was best known for his ladylike, Chanel-inspired cardigan suits, in the 1960s Adolfo’s designs were playful and even flamboyant. He won a second, special Coty Award in 1969 for his head to toe women’s design. His licensed lines in the 1970s included menswear, scarves, perfume and wigs, and in 1985 he introduced Adolfo Atelier, a lower priced women’s sportswear line. In 1993 he retired from custom design to focus on his licensed businesses.

Mary Adrienne Steckling-Coen (1934-2006), known to the fashion world as “Adri,” was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, where she attended the School of Fine Arts in St. Louis. After winning a guest editor spot on Mademoiselle magazine’s College Issue in 1955, she decided to stay in New York and transferred to the Parsons School of Design. While at Parsons, Adri met designer Claire McCardell, who was volunteering as a critic in the fashion design department. McCardell became Adri’s mentor and was highly influential in helping her define her design aesthetic, as the two shared a passion for creating clothes for the modern woman with an active lifestyle.


After graduating from Parsons in 1958, Adri apprenticed a number of designers including Oleg Cassini and Anne Fogarty. She launched her first solo collection for Adri Designs Inc. in 1966. A long list of sportswear lines followed under several different labels. She opened Adri Studio Limited on Seventh Avenue in 1976, featuring designer sportswear with her trademark style; mix & match pieces with clean, elegant lines.

Among her many accolades, The Smithsonian Institution honored both her and McCardell with a 1971 exhibition titled “Innovative Contemporary Fashion: Adri and McCardell.” She received a Coty American Fashion Critics “Winnie” award in 1982.

In the 1980s-1990s Adri created a series of Vogue designer patterns and continued to design several sportswear collections a year, selling to boutiques and private customers until her death of Parkinson’s disease in 2006.

Written by Ranch Queen Vintage

Adrian Jules, Ltd, was founded in 1964 by Adriano Roberti, a master tailor and designer from Italy. The company specializes in high quality, custom tailored men’s suits, tuxedos, top coats and dress shirts.

In 2006, the Robb Report featured Adrian Jules as the only American suit maker that still does most of the tailoring by hand.

Written by pinky-a-gogo

Gilbert Adrian (1903-1959) born Adrian Adolph Greenberg, first designed movie costumes for Rudolph Valentino in the mid-1920s. He worked for Cecil B. DeMille in 1926, and in 1928 he went to M-G-M. It was here that Adrian made his name as one of the great Hollywood designers, designing the costumes for over 230 movies.

He dressed some of Hollywood’s greatest stars, and was responsible for Joan Crawford’s big-shouldered look that influenced the way American women dressed. He was also known for his glamorous flowing gowns. In 1942, Adrian left M-G-M to open his own design house and shop in Beverly Hills. Due to illness, he retired in 1952.

The Adrian Original label was originally sold in 25 stores across the US. The ‘Adrian Custom’ label was used on anything produced for a specific client, including custom-fit suits, one-of-a-kind garments, and ensembles of very limited production, usually about six or less, with client-specific alterations or variations to the design.

See also: Adrian

Written by kickshawproductions & Bret Fowler

Agnes was a Parisian milliner. She trained at Talbot and Reboux before opening her salon in 1917. She was located at 6 rue St. Florentin until 1935. In 1936 she moved to 83 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore. Agnes was open into the 1940s, closing around 1947.

Label note: Adaptation labels were used not by the designer, but by US firms that were making fashions that were adapted from the designer’s work. Many firms did adaptations, and an adaptation might be a faithful reproduction of the original, or it might be very loosely based on the designer’s work.

Written by Fuzzylizzie

Agnes B. (b.1941) is a French sportswear designer who began her career in the early 1970s as junior editor of Elle magazine and later as assistant to Dorothy Bis. In the mid 1970s she opened her own boutique in Paris where she remade French worker’s uniforms, black leather blazers and rugby fabric T-shirts. Her goal was to sell to those who did not want to look too “fashionable.” Her clothing, encompassing those for men, women and children, has a timeless quality being simple and relaxed in design.

Her clothes are made for the “real” person, not just the fashion conscious or the elite, and her separates mix well with one’s own vintage or modern clothing. Rather than risk her non-design type clothing be obscured or overlooked in a large department store environment, she went on to open more of her own boutiques worldwide, including her first American store in New York in 1980.

A shrewd businesswoman, she has stated, “I have no desire to dress an elite. It’s all a game. I work as if I were still in my grandmother’s attic, dressing up. Clothes aren’t everything. When they become too important, when they hide the person wearing them, then I don’t like them. Clothes should make you feel happy, relaxed, and ready to tackle other problems.”

Written by vintageclothesline

A haute couture house founded by Mme. Agnès ca. 1898. From the October 3, 1898 New York Sun: “MME. AGNES Formerly a designer of the house of Doucet, she recently founded a business of her own, which her superb abilities and her charming personality rendered instantly successful.” Her publicized clients included the Queen of Holland. Agnès’ models were sold in the US by John Wanamaker as early as 1898 – 1899. The earliest label found so far is c. 1910-12, and shows an address at 23, Rue Louis-le-Grand, Paris.

By 1909, Les Modes refers to Mme. Havet as the Directrice of the House of Agnès. Mme Havet had previously had her own house, also as of 1898, although she had designed for other dressmakers previously. Mme. Havet’s clients under her own name included the Empress of Russia. Her success and drawing power were sufficient for her name to appear on the label. From 1909 on, the house is referred to as “La Maison Agnès, Mme Havet Directrice”. The house moved to 7 rue Auber, and the label was changed to Mme Havet Agnès 7 Rue Auber by the mid teens, quite possibly earlier. The fate of the founder, Agnès, is unknown at this time. James McCreery and Harry Angelo carried their models in the U.S., and the house was popular with American clients.

Agnès is listed in L’Officiel from 1921 – 1930 as “Agnès, Mme Havet Directrice 7 rue Auber”. In 1931, the house combined with Drecoll, which had previously merged with Beer in 1929. The new house was listed as “Agnès-Drecoll, Mme. Havet Directrice, 24 Place Vendome” until 1941. From 1941 – 1952, the House is simply Agnès-Drecoll. After a career of some 48 years, Mme Havet is no longer mentioned. Listings and credits for the house in L’Officiel cease in 1952. Some sources state the house closed in 1963.

Written by pastperfectvintage.com

Etienne Aigner (1904-2000) was an Hungarian maker of handbags and other leather goods He worked in France, producing leather goods for companies such as Dior, but came to the United States in 1949. He worked out of his apartment, producing belts in what became his trademark dark red color. He opened a showroom in 1959.

Today there are two separate Etienne Aigner companies – one in the US and the other based in Munich, Germany.

Written by Fuzzylizzie

Gil Aimbez (b. 1940) studied art and fashion in Los Angeles before heading to New York. There he worked for Anne Klein and other firms as a pattern maker and design assistant. In 1973 Aimbez became the sportswear designer at Genre, a company owned by Peter Clements. Other labels were added; Bon Menage in 1977 and Snafu in 1978.

In recent years Aimbez has run his own fashion consultancy firm, and has worked with the Thai government to help improve the marketing of Thai fabrics and fashions.

Written by Fuzzylizzie

Akris was founded in Switzerland in 1922 by Alice Kriemler-Schoch. The company initially made simple, dotted aprons that were crafted by Kriemler-Schoch on a single sewing machine. In 1944, her son, Max Kriemler, took over the business. The company grew significantly and under Max Kriemler, Akris produced clothing lines for French designers Givenchy and Ted Lapidus.

In 1980, Max Kriemler’s right-hand man died so his son, Albert, was asked to postpone his fashion studies in Paris along with an apprenticeship at Givenchy, in order to help with the transition. As a result, Albert would never complete his fashion education but within that two year absence, he had already begun to take over the company.

Peter Kriemler, Albert’s brother, joined Akris in 1987 to head its financial side. Peter is now Akris’s global president, handling management and manufacturing.

Under Albert Kriemler’s creative direction, Akris became increasingly conscious of the quality of its design. Albert is known for his creative flair and demand for uncompromising quality. In 1995, Akris also introduced a less expensive, younger-looking line called Akris Punto.

Akris was admitted to the French ‘Chambre Syndicale’, the governing body of the French fashion industry, in 2000. Unusually, the company delayed participating in Paris Fashion Week until 2004, when it was able to secure a spot on one of the event’s most important days. In the 2000s, the company was one of the world’s fastest-growing designer brands, becoming the top seller at stores such as Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus.