In 1996, the Shannon Rodgers and Jerry Silverman School of Fashion Design and Merchandising at Kent State University opened the June F. Mohler Fashion Library. With this opening many resources that had been given to the school were discovered. Because of the connections of Shannon Rodgers and Jerry Silverman, people from Seventh Avenue business and the fashion world, in general, donated items to the new school when it was created in the eighties. Archival materials intended for a library were boxed and remained in storage until the funds to open the library were established.

Amongst the boxes of materials was a box donated from Martha’s of New York. The box had a mixture of items including 19 original color sketches marked Albert Lesage & Cie, 13 rue Grange-Batelière, PROvene 80-93 – PARIS IX e. All of these sketches appear to be of designs from the mid-1950s. In addition, there are sketches from another artist that span about three decades from the 1950s to the 1970s. Furthermore there are about 30 partial tissue garment patterns. These patterns are hand-drawn with a wide graphite pencil and the notations on them are in French. The box had a few other items including some clippings from magazines and fashion calendars. No information was with the box to help explain the items and their relationship to each other (if, indeed, any relationship existed).

Upon finding the items, Dr. Rhodes was immediately curious about the designs with the Lesage stamp on them. Did Lesage ever make garments, I wondered? If not, why were these drawings stamped with the Lesage name? How did the drawings come to be at Martha’s? What was the relationship between the two sets of drawings, obviously by different artists? What was the relationship of the tissue patterns to the drawings? How did tissue patterns labeled in French come to be at Martha’s? To begin answering these questions, a brief review of the two businesses, Martha’s and Lesage is important.

In 1935, Martha Phillips, a New York housewife persuaded her father, a Brooklyn retailer, to lend her $10,000 to start her own dress shop (Forbes, November 2, 1987). The store was on the 12^th floor of 501 Madison Avenue. As a side interest, this is also where Estee Lauder began her career. Later the Martha’s business would be at 58^th and 5^th in the Savoy Plaza Hotel, but General Motors demolished the building to erect a skyscraper and Martha took her business to Park Avenue where it thrived (NYTimes 12/23/92). It was the Park Avenue Store that most people associate with the name Martha.

Martha dealt in luxury goods. The store’s was a salon atmosphere with the clothes elegantly modeled by pencil-thin models on whom they looked divine. Martha is credited with discovering and promoting many a designer name such as Herrera, Trigere, Valentino, Halston, Zandra Rhodes, Sao, Galanos, Stavroupolos, Blass, Andre Laug and Christian Francis Roth. Martha’s top-selling designers were reported to have been Galanos and Bill Blass.

In the early years of business Martha, herself, dressed in Chanel. This was during the years when Coco was living. Later, by the mid-80s Martha was mostly dressed in Galanos. She reported that Balenciaga was her favorite designer and that she was most impressed with Dior (WWD, 4/28/86).

Among the noteworthy clients of Martha were Mrs. Guest of New York, Mrs. Massey in Palm Beach, Diana Ross, Barbara Walters and Marjorie Merriweather Post. In the late fifties, Post started buying custom-made dresses from Martha. Post would select dresses from sketches and look at fabrics in the shop. Phillips and her daughter, Lynn Manulis, took garments to the Post home for fittings. Garments frequently were designed to coordinate with jewelry.

Business thrived for a period of time. By December 1988, Vogue reported that the top salesladies at Martha’s were selling $50,000 in merchandise per day. Six stores were now in New York and Florida generating in excess of $40 million per year. That sales figure represented about $1,000 per square foot; five times the department store average of the same period. Her mark-ups were high, netting 8-10% pre-tax return; a figure about double what other stores were averaging. (Forbes, November 2, 1987).

The main store was continued to be the Park Avenue store. Here selling was never done on the floor. This was a lovely space with chandeliers and mirrors. Selling was confined to the dressing room. Dressing rooms provided robes for the women to wear between fittings. Both dressing room and robe were in a lovely shade of pink so as to accent the woman’s natural beauty. Husbands were welcomed and were served lunch or drinks. Customers had a favorite salesperson and a favorite fitter. A telephone in the dressing room would summons the appropriate fitter when needed.

Fitting was an essential part of the service every Martha customer came to expect. The alteration room employed 15-20 people at the Park Avenue store and another 8 at the Trumph Towers location. Stores in Palm Beach and Bal Harbour, Florida also had alteration rooms. Once the garment was altered, it had a Martha label sewn in, it was well pressed and specially packaged in a Martha garment bag and delivered. Sleeves and other areas were padded with tissue so as to retain the pressing and shape.

Circa 1984 Martha opened the shop at Trump towers, within walking distance of the traditional shop, but an entire generation away. This shop, while elegant and extreme in service, had clothes on the racks and customers could come in and "just look." Lynn Manulis, Martha’s daughter and business partner, was quoted as saying: "They’re used to shopping in a different type of store. Here they can buy couture off the peg, and even just browse if they’d like (Connoisseur’s World, December 1984)."

On Tuesday, April 29, 1986, the Italian Consulate in New York bestowed upon Martha the rank of Cavaliere for her role in promoting such Italian desingers as Valentino, Mila Schon, André Laug and Gianfranco Ferré (WWD 4/28/86). No other person exceeded her contribution of bringing Italian designers to America.

After many great years, Martha’s began to experience difficulties in the early 90s. The world was changing. The recession eroded the spending power of some of the best customers and wrought a fundamental change in attitudes toward clothing. On December 22 1992, Martha Phillips Management, Inc. went into Chapter 11. The company filed at Federal Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Chanel and Galanos were the two largest unsecured claims against the company at $303,540 and $300,651 respectively (NYTimes 12/23/92). The stores remained in Chapter 11 while they were reorganized. Eventually, in 1993, all Martha’s stores closed except the Palm Beach location, which changed names to Martha Phillips, Inc.

Martha Phillips, Inc. in Palm Beach, Florida continues to provide elegant luxury garments to women of taste today. Lynn Manulis runs this business. Miss Martha died, at the age of 98, on Saturday, September 7, 1996, at her home in Palm Beach. Upon her death, donations were made to the Shannon Rodgers and Jerry Silverman School of Fashion Design and Merchandising in her name. Later, in 1998, Miss Lynn would complete an amount of money sufficient for an endowment for the Martha Phillips Endowed Scholarship so that Miss Martha and her accomplishments in luxury retailing could be forever remembered.

The Paris-based embroidery House of Lesage traces its roots to the mid-1800’s when Michonet (later to become the House of Lesage) embroidered for the House of Worth (the first couturier). Since that time M. Albert Lesage and M. Francois Lesage have provided beading and embroidery for most of the important couture houses in Paris and for many American designers.

Madeleine Vionnet, in the 1920s, and Elsa Schiaparelli, in the 1930s, both used Lesage embroideries as a major part of their collections. Albert Lesage supplied most of these embroideries.

In the 1950s, Francois Lesage began working with Jacques Fath and Pierre Balmain. By the 1960s the House of Lesage had added Balenciaga and Givenchy as major clients. Ives Saint Laurent was to be added in the 1970s.

By 1980, the House of Lesage was the unchallenged Embroiderer of the World. The House supplied such designers as Marc Bohan (Dior), Karl Lagerfeld (Chanel), Christian Lacroix (Patou and for his own house), Hanae Mori and Jean-Louis Sherrer. Add to this list such U.S. designers as Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, Calvin Klein, Carolyne Roehm and Carolina Herrera.

For details on the House of Lesage and its history, consult the book Haute Couture Embroidery: The Art of Lesage by Palmer White (1987 and 1994 by Lacis Publications).

Before going further with this story, the reader should know a little of how Kent State University fits with Martha’s and Lesage.

In 1985 the Kent State University Museum, and in 1990 the Shannon Rodgers and Jerry Silverman School of Fashion Design and Merchandising opened at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. These units were the result of a dream of Shannon Rodgers and Jerry Silverman when they closed their Seventh Avenue business in New York City.

The second director of the school, Dr. June F. Mohler, was a former professor from New York University where she taught Andrew Burnstine. Mr. Burnstine is the grandson of Martha Phillips. Through his generosity and interest in the school, many items from Martha’s came to the school. Most of these items were donated in the mid-90s when Martha’s was closing in New York.

As the third director of the school, Dr. Elizabeth Rhodes came to Kent after having worked with the House of Lesage on several educational ventures. Through her efforts the first Lesage classes in beading and embroidery taught outside of Paris were offered at Kent State University in the summer of 1995. These classes were repeated in the summer of 1996. Through these linkages, Dr. Rhodes was familiar with the archives at Lesage and with M. Francois Lesage.

When Dr. Rhodes saw the items from Martha’s she was knowledgeable of both Lesage and Martha’s, but the connection was not obvious. She began to explore the connection by reading about both houses to learn more. Several articles exist that link Francois Lesage with Miss Martha and Miss Lynn. Most of these are publicity stories when M. Lesage would be in Martha’s in New York. Nothing in the literature turned up any insight to their collaborations.

The one fact the literature did reveal comes from Palmer White’s book on Lesage. The book has photos of color sketches of identical styles to the ones found at Kent. Palmer White identified these sketches as being the artwork of Colette Lesage, the deceased first wife of Francois Lesage. Mr. White did not further elaborate on the purpose of these sketches or on any collaboration with Lesage and Martha’s.

The next step was to set an appointment to talk to M. Francois Lesage. This was arranged for July 1997. Dr. Rhodes arranged an oral history interview with M. Lesage at his atelier in Paris. With M. Lesage’s permission, Dr. Rhodes also spent two days in the Lesage archives researching documents that made a link to Martha’s . . . Lesage . . . Kent.

Following the interview with M. Lesage, Dr. Rhodes spoke on the telephone extensively with Lynn Manulis. Miss Martha was deceased at this point. Miss Lynn was the only person from that side of the story who could be interviewed. Then, in April 1998, Miss Lynn was at Kent and Dr. Rhodes completed the interview in person.

The stories of Mill Lynn and M. Lesage are almost identical, so one summary will be made with notations about where any discrepancy occurs.

In the 1950s, tradesmen such as M. Lesage were not permitted by the couture houses to photograph the garments of the couture. Obviously, being a designer of the embroidery and embellishment, M. Lesage wanted to document how his creations were used. His wife had artistic skills, and was a fashion designer in her own right, so he asked her to assist him. Colette Lesage would take the ideas presented by the couturier and the embroidery designs of her husband, coupled with her own imagination, and create a color sketch for the House of Lesage to use as documentation of how their embroidery was used. Indeed, when Dr. Rhodes was using the archives of Lesage, many times a Colette Lesage sketch was attached to the back of an embroidery sample with notations of various sorts as to whose design it was, the year, etc.

When couturiers used the services of M. Lesage, it was customary that they would first look at the embroidery designs from Lesage and make selections that appealed. From these selections they worked with M. Lesage to create modifications that best met their design needs. It was, therefore, necessary for Francois Lesage to understand how his embroidery would be used on the garment. In addition, in order to provide this embroidery, specific pattern pieces were provided so the embroidery designs were appropriately placed. So, M. Lesage would have pattern pieces for garments designed by Fath or Balmain or others. This process continues today and pattern pieces on heavy brown tissue traced with a wide graphite pencil, can still be seen in use at Lesage. These patterns are very similar to the ones from the 1950s at Kent State University.

Miss Martha was Lesage’s major American client. M. Lesage would do embroidery for many garments that were produced in the workrooms of Matha’s and sold with the Martha label. From time to time Francois Lesage would provide Martha Phillips and Lynn Manulis with "inspiration" for their own Martha label by showing them the sketches of Colette Lesage. Miss Lynn said, "Of course, we modified the designs to make them Martha Originals. We usually used less embroidery and made the dress a little simpler so we could sell it at a better price." Martha had workrooms and the ability to produce the pattern and the garment in house. The embroidery was done in Paris in the Lesage atelier.

The major discrepancy in the story comes with the existence of the patterns. M. Lesage noted that Martha came to him with the pattern pieces. Miss Lynn said that her mother had no way to have these patterns except that Francois Lesage gave them to her. They were helpful to the Martha workrooms in interpreting the designs for the Martha Originals. Some of the patterns have the word "Fath" written on them and one pattern can definitely be traced to a Balmain design. This time period is consistent with a time when Lesage was doing much embroidery for these two designers.

Miss Lynn also noted that Martha’s had a sketch artist who did sketches to be sent to their best clients. This was, of course, before the day of color photocopying! The sketch artist would sketch many copies of the same garment and they would go to different clients. The "other" sketches in the box at Kent are from this artist. Some of them are multiple copies of the same garment. One of them is a Martha Original of a garment also drawn by Colette Lesage (of an unknown designer).

To complete this story, the 19 sketches are provided with the documentation that Dr. Rhodes was able to establish on each one. Some have more complete documentation than others because of what information was available from the Lesage archives.