Nettie Rosenstein
Nettie Rosenstein (c. 1890-1980), an American fashion designer in the early to mid-20th century, helped democratize fashion through her creation of high-quality ready-to-wear items and her practice of adapting designs to fit women of different sizes. She’s known for helping popularize the “little black dress” in the United States, where its sophisticated simplicity provided a welcome contrast to the ruffles and embellishments previously common. Many of her designs were widely copied and spread to women of different income brackets, thus increasing her influence on fashion.
Born in Austria, Rosenstein moved to New York City with her parents in the 1890s. She began learning dressmaking skills at a young age, as she worked with fabrics in her parents’ dry-goods store and then designed dresses for customers at her sister Pauline’s millinery business next door, Madame Pauline. In 1913 she married Saul Rosenstein, with whom she had two children, and in 1916 she began running a custom dressmaking business from her home in Harlem.
By 1921 Rosenstein had moved the business to a more fashionable address and employed fifty seamstresses. She switched to selling dresses wholesale under the Nettie Rosenstein label, and while multiple stores in a city could sell her clothes, only one retail store per city had the right to sell them under her label. This was unusual at a time when retail stores generally sold clothes under their own label, but the Nettie Rosenstein label proved valuable due to the high quality and vast popularity of her designs. Unlike many designers for the ready-to-wear market, she fitted her dresses on models of different sizes and adjusted the proportions as needed, rather than simply scaling them up from the typical very small model size. Because of this care, even mass-produced garments could fit well and flatter many figures.
Rosenstein first tried retirement in 1927, but she became bored and two years later returned to work designing for Corbeau & Cie. In 1931 she and Eva Rosencrans, her sister-in-law, and Charles Gumprecht, from Corbeau & Cie, restarted the wholesale business. Nettie Rosenstein, Inc. flourished even during the Great Depression, grossing $1 million in 1937. Major department stores like I. Magnin, Neiman Marcus, Nan Duskin, and Bonwit Teller carried her garments, which sold for as much as $500, making them some of the most expensive of that era.
Another aspect that differentiated Rosenstein from other designers was her attention to the complete ensemble. She had hats made by Madame Pauline and used custom gloves and handbags to complement her designs, and her costume jewelry was very popular as well. While her garments were expensive, they were also copied by many others and sold at lower price points, meaning her sophisticated designs found an even broader reach.
Rosenstein traveled to Europe for ideas and most notably brought back the “little black dress,” which had an understated chic she became well known for. She received the Coty Award for high end wholesale in 1947, an acknowledgement of her skill and impact. She still did some custom work, though; one of her and Eva Rosencrans’ most famous custom designs was Mamie Eisenhower’s pink inaugural gown of 1953, embedded with over 2,000 rhinestones. She also designed dresses worn by Hildegaard.
While she closed her clothing business in 1961, she continued to design handbags and jewelry. She died in 1980 after a long illness.
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