House of Thurn was an haute couture label founded by Sidonie Thurn and continued by her daughter Carolyn Hague. The house, known by its label as Thurn, prepared made-to-order fashions for its wealthy customers. Begun as a small import shop in Brooklyn, Thurn occupied a succession of buildings on or near Fifth Avenue from 1870 to 1934. The last of these was a remodeled Gilded Age townhouse located between Madison and Fifth Avenues at 15 East 52nd Street. An article in Arts & Decoration magazine for July 1923 described this location as "a charming salon, all flattering French gray, with sparkling mirrors and gracious French furniture covered with satin damask of gray and gold." In 1926, a writer for The Nation listed Thurn as one of the sixteen most exclusive houses in New York. In 1937, the owner of one of the sixteen houses, said that Thurn had been "practically the highest class business establishment of the kind in New York City." Museum collections that hold Thurn fashions include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hillwood Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Fashion Institute of Design Museum, Los Angeles.
Origins
Thurn's founder was a German immigrant named Caroline Sidonie Dittmarsch, who in the mid-1860s had married a teacher named Leopold Thurn. After operating briefly in partnership with the head of a girls' school, Sidonie opened the first of the Thurn clothing shops in 1870. At that time, both the business and the proprietor were called either Madame L. Thurn or simply Madame Thurn. In 1873, Thurn moved from its original Brooklyn location to one on Broadway two blocks north of Union Square. It made children's clothing and accessories from Parisian designs and custom-fitted them to its customers, adding embroidery and other enhancements as requested. In 1880, Thurn moved to 288 Fifth Avenue, the first of a succession of Fifth Avenue locations. In 1890, the shop moved further uptown to 426 Fifth Avenue and remained there until 1913 when the entire block was torn down to make way for construction of the flagship building of the Lord & Taylor department store.
In the 1890s, Thurn benefited from the increasing preference of wealthy Americans for Parisian fashions. The firm continued to grow and by 1889 it employed a large staff of trimmers, drapers, finishers, and other specialized workers who were supervised by a forewoman. Its workforce in 1900 was 175 employees of all types. One source says that Thurn attracted society clients during this period, including members of the Rockefeller and Mellon families.
In 1880, Sidonie's fifteen-year-old daughter, Carolyn, had begun to work in the shop by using shop trimmings to make dolls' hats to sell as Christmas gifts. About ten years later, Sidonie hired a Parisian artist named Ernest Hague (or Hagué) to make patterns and design dresses. Soon thereafter, Carolyn married Hague and took Madame Hague as her professional name. About 1912, Thurn hired as designer James B. Blaine, a man who had worked for Parisian houses and who had served as president of the Ladies' Tailors and Dressmakers' Association of America. A year later, the name "Thurn" became a registered trademark. During this period, the business continued to grow as wealthy Americans set new records in their expenditures to purchase Parisian fashions and other imported luxuries.
At the turn of the century, Sidonie had agreed with Hague's proposal that Thurn begin to offer Parisian fashions for young women and in 1901 Sidonie signed papers making Hague her partner in the business. In 1902, Thurn began placing want ads for workers skilled in making women's clothing and by 1903 it had established "a special department for young matrons and debutantes". A year later, an article in Good Housekeeping described how the New York dressmakers would adapt Parisian designs for American women. The author said, "American women can very seldom wear the things designed for the Parisian," and explained, "of course, the original design is Parisian and is recognized as such, but certain alterations are necessary and are always made."
In the early years of the twentieth century, wealthy women and the couturiers they patronized attempted to save money by smuggling Parisian fashions into the Port of New York. At the time, these duties amounted to 50% to 80% of the cost of the items being imported, and in some cases, such as woolen cloth, they could double the cost of the imported material. In 1909, Hague and the owners of other New York fashion houses were arrested and subsequently paid fines for attempting to avoid import duties. News accounts of the 1909 smuggling attempt revealed that steamer trunks containing Paris fashions and fabrics would be surreptitiously moved from the docks of arriving ocean liners to the docks of departing ones. From there, it was possible to retrieve the trunks as if they were being reclaimed by passengers who had booked passaged and then canceled their trips at the last moment.
1914–1933, House of Thurn
In 1914, Thurn occupied its final and principal location at 15 E. 52nd Street in Manhattan. The building had been constructed in 1903 as a private residence for the sales director of the Procter & Gamble soap company. Designed by the American architect Donn Barber, the building featured imported marble and was said to be one of the finest mansions in the city. Thurn had the interior of the upper floors modified for the use of its dressmakers but left intact the facade and ground floor with its elegant curved staircase (see Image No. 1, above). The twenty-one-year lease had an aggregate rental of $500,000. When Thurn opened in the new location, the neighborhood was in a transition from residential to commercial. The Vanderbilt family had sold its properties along nearby Fifth Avenue and prestigious retail firms, such as the Cartier jewelry store, were taking their place. Hague later recalled that she and her mother perceived the 52nd Street location to be more prestigious than 57th Street.
In 1917, Hague bought her mother's share of the business for $100,000 and became its sole owner. By the time of her mother's death in 1919, she had become a successful and respected designer, stylist, maker, and seller of fashionable women's clothing. In the early 1920s, Thurn attracted the attention of the editors of women's magazines (see Image No. 2, for example) and began to place full-page ads to bolster its business (see Image Nos. 3 and 4). In 1923, Hague told an interviewer that while society women would then still travel to Paris to see fashions, they often would make appointments to see her on their return. She said: "We choose and import the flower of the French collections, and then add to the group our own originations. We think of a woman's whole day—her tailleurs, her trotteur hats, her daytime frocks and dance frocks, her sport clothes, dinner gowns, theatre gowns, everything! A woman can come to us and know that she will find frocks and wraps and costumes for every hour, and all in the same spirit of simple distinction that marks the clothes of our house." Hague employed a general manager to oversee operations and gave her personal attention to the satisfaction of her customers' wishes. In 1931, a writer said of Thurn, "all the blue-bloods in town come here at some time or other, as do many rich and aristocratic out-of-towners, to put themselves into the competent hands of Madame Hague, daughter of the first Thurn." Hague later said she had customers who would buy from her as many as sixty gowns a year. To prepare for the spring and fall fashion seasons in New York, she would make two annual trips to Paris. During these sessions, she would make note of the new styles, arrange to buy models of clothing she believed were suitable for her customers, and purchase the fabrics she needed to produce made-to-order fashions from the models. Describing Hague as smart and clever, the writer of an article in Vogue wrote, "if one could copy the way she thinks, one would know all about clothes." In 1937, a long-time customer said that throughout her long association with Thurn she had full confidence in Hague's taste. She said, "I have spent a great deal of money there, and it was worth it... It is like going to Cartier's or Tiffany's. When you say you are going to Thurn's, you are going to Thurn's. That meant a whole lot."
After she retired, Hague explained Thurn's business in some detail. Like other made-to-order houses, it employed hundreds of women to stitch garments using sewing machines and by handwork. It used a much smaller number of skilled craftswomen, including the designers who created patterns, the cutters who cut fabric according to pattern, the drapers who adjusted the garments to suit each customer's needs, and the finishers who made sure each garment fitted the customer correctly. Thurn also employed saleswomen and their assistants who accompanied customers throughout their visits to the shop. It priced its dresses between $175 and $450 each. During the busy weeks of the year's two fashion seasons, it would serve 50 to 60 customers a day.
There are various measures of Thurn's success. In 1924, the business paid over $32,000 in state taxes while a major competitor, Bergdorf Goodman, paid less than $28.000 In 1925, a writer for Vogue called Thurn "the last and greatest of the old dressmaking houses of New York". In 1926, an article in The Nation by labor organizer Ann Washington Craton described the custom-dress fashion industry in New York. She listed Thurn as one of the sixteen most exclusive houses in the city, saying, "the patrons and customers are the wealthiest women in America, who wear the most exquisite, the most expensive, and the most beautiful clothes in the world, Paris not excepted." In 1931, another writer said that the staircase at Thurn was a favorite location for fashionable brides because "its curve is perfect for trains and because so many brides get their white satin at Thurn's."
With its lease expiring, the Great Depression stubbornly persisting, and Hague having passed the benchmark retirement age of sixty-five. Thurn closed its doors for the last time in 1934.
Design and fittings
In Hague's world, models were dress designs. She would buy a model in Paris to be recreated in Thurn's sewing rooms or she or one of her in-house designers would create original fashions for Thurn's customers. Customers would generally arrive by appointment. They would be met by a saleswoman, sometimes called a vendeuse, and, after stating what interests they had that day, would probably proceed up a curved stone staircase to view young women, called manikins, wearing a selection of the house's current designs. If a customer's body type was more like hers than like the slender young women's, Hague might take the role of manikin herself. Each dress normally required three hour-long fitting sessions before it was completed.
In 1922, Thurn placed an ad in Arts & Decoration magazine stating that its styles were "absolutely exclusive" enabling its customers to differentiate themselves from all other women. A year later, Hague described her role as designer: "I make each gown for some specific type of woman. I see her, in my imagination, long before I begin to choose fabrics or to sketch details. I begin to picture her while I study the style tendencies of the season, and when I review the early collections of the great Paris houses; ... a skilled designer can do much by subduing, emphasizing and supplementing, to develop new aspects of a woman's charm." Regarding the designs themselves, Hague said, "Thurn makes clothes for ladies. That is a hackneyed word I know. But how shall I put it? Our collections are always notably restrained... Our clothes are wearable. "That is why so many American women come to us, I think, instead of going to Paris for gowns."