Lucien Lelong

Passions

Vocation

Notable

Family

French couturier who was prominent from the 1920s to the 1940s. Lelong opened his fashion house in the early 1910s. The first Lelong designs were featured in Vogue magazine in 1913. Poor health caused the end of his career; Lelong retired in 1952. Lelong did not actually create the garments that bore his label. His designers included Christian Dior, who was a member of the Lelong team from 1941 until 1946, during which time he created the collections in collaboration with Pierre Balmain. Other designers who worked for Lelong included Nadine Robinson and Hubert de Givenchy. Among Lelong's clients were Marie Duhamel, Jeanne Ternisien (wife of the banker Georges Nelze), the Duchess de la Rochefoucauld, Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Colette, and Rose Kennedy. Lelong married three times. He first married Anne-Marie Audoy on 11 December 1918. They divorced on 16 July 1927. He married his second wife, Princess Natalie Paley (1905–1981), on 9 August 1927. She had worked as a saleswoman in the Lelong perfume department. She was a daughter of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia and his morganatic wife, Olga Karnovich. They divorced in 1937. Lelong married his third wife, Sanda Dancovici on 9 March 1954. She outlived him (she died in 2001) and went on to marry the French journalist Maurice Goudeket, the widower of Colette. Lelong died of a heart attack on 11 May 1958 in Anglet, France. Link to Wikipedia biography (French)