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KING, MURIEL 1900-1977

FASHION DESIGNER

Classic Designs

Muriel King preached the importance of designing dresses that looked good the first, second, and third season well before the Depression of the 1930s. Good design, she believed, never went out of fashion. Her philosophy of classic fashion served her well in the 1930s, as consumers who could do so stopped replacing their wardrobes each season and looked for clothes that would look good for years.

Fashion Drawing

As a girl King dreamed of being an artist. After studying art at the University of Washington she went to New York to study fashion at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts. While in school she freelanced as a fashion artist for Women's Wear Daily, Vogue, and various New York department stores, which she continued to do throughout the 1920s, Friends encouraged her to design her own clothes, and in 1932 she began. She was proclaimed the creator of fashions that revealed "the artist's impatience with monotony/' and her designs were introduced by Lord and Taylor, a New York department store. Each of the originals accompanying her debut was priced at $125, with copies ranging irom $29.50 to-$49.50.

Striking Out Alone

A few months after her debut King opened her first salon. Taking a risk by opening a new venture in the depths of the Depression, she reassured herself by thinking that the salon could serve as a home to her family if the business did not succeed. Her worries never materialized. In fact, she soon expanded her salon from one to three floors. In 1935 King went to Hollywood to design costumes for Katharine Hepburn for the film Sylvia Scarlett She was amused by the experience: "I flew out and back to California twice, and worked very hard when I was there," she said, "and what designs do you think finally appeared in that picture? A cotton dress, a clown suit, and a raincoat!" In 1937 she did the costumes for Hepburn and Ginger Rogers in Stage Door.

King's Creative Techniques

King described her designing process as "backwards." She first sketched the dress in color. When the outline and drape of the garment were complete, she chose the fabric. Contemporaries agreed that if she knew more about cutting and sewing she might be restrained by technical difficulties from trying for certain effects. Her defiance of traditional rules gave her clothes the freshness for which she was famous.

Designs for the People

Throughout the 1940s King continued to design for Hollywood, and in 1940 she abruptly closed her high-priced salon, claiming it was too elitist. She began working on a series of dress-design patterns for a women's magazine, offering quality patterns to women who could not afford her originals. In 1943 she designed Flying Fortress Fashions for women workers in the aircraft industry, which workers and critics adored.