Carnegie’s advertisements capture the trend-setting fashions of the late 1920s and early 1930s that established her as the arbiter of American style.
an ad for Fall
Vogue, June 21, 1930.
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

HATTIE CARNEGIE (1886-1956) began life as Henrietta Köningeiser in Vienna, Austria. She rose from obscurity as a Jewish immigrant on Manhattan's Lower East Side to build a women's fashion empire that brought her wealth and international fame. Hattie shed her ethnic identity, and as the leading interpreter of American taste and fashion, her designs epitomized sophistication. Known for her understated elegance, she developed the "little Carnegie suit," and the "Carnegie look," an ensemble that was the status symbol for the American woman. Although she could neither sew nor draw a pattern, her unerring eye for fashion transformed Parisian haute couture into a uniquely American style.

Carnegie began as a New York clerk who wore her meager wardrobe with such flair that she caught the attention of a Jewish dressmaker, Rose Roth. The two became business partners in 1909, but Carnegie bought out Roth nine years later. Adopting the name of the wealthiest man in America as her own, she styled her fledgling empire "Hattie Carnegie, Inc." She adapted European fashion to create the "Carnegie Look"-simple but stylish, understated yet elegant and luxurious-which, by the 1920s, symbolized American high fashion.


Models wear the wide range of clothing available from Hattie Carnegie — from military uniforms to fashionable cocktail and evening gowns, early 1950s.
Carnegie Models
Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Behring Center.

Carnegie expanded her line to include furs, jewelry, lingerie, hats, perfumes, and accessories. In 1925, she struck a deal with I. Magnin, the California department store that made her clothing accessible to Hollywood's elite. This bold stroke, enabled her to influence fashion on both coasts. Amid the Depression, she launched Spectator Sports, a moderately priced, ready-to-wear line of sportswear sold in retail stores. It was an immediate success. During the Korean War, the Army selected Carnegie to redesign the Women's Army Corps (WAC) uniform for which she received the Army's highest civilian award. At her death, she presided over an eight-million-dollar enterprise.
Portrait Photo at top — Hattie Carnegie, 1944. Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt/Time Pix.
 
Further Resources

On Hattie Carnegie, see: L. H., “Profiles: Luxury, Inc.” The New Yorker (March 31, 1934); Russell Maloney, “Hattie Carnegie,” Life (November 12, 1945); Hambla Bauer, “Hot Fashions by Hattie,” Collier’s (April 16, 1949). For an obituary, see “Hattie Carnegie Dies Here at 69,” New York Times, February 23, 1956. For biographical essays, see Dennita Sewell, “Hattie Carnegie,” in Hyman and Moore, eds., Jewish Women in America, vol. 1; and Alma A. Kenney, “Hattie Carnegie,” in Notable American Women: The Modern Period (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1980). Variations on the spelling of Köningeiser include Konengeiser and Koeningeiser.