Creative Person; Pauline Trigere

National Educational Television and Radio Center · March 12, 1967

Pauline Trigere, one of America's foremost couturieres, was born in France in 1912. At the age of 11 she began working with her father, who was a tailor, and soon after became highly skilled in designing clothes. She fled France with her brother at the advent of Hitler and came to New York. Impressed with the city she decided to stay and opened a small designing business which, unfortunately, failed. Soon afterwards she opened another, this time with much more success. Her designs began to gain recognition and she built a reputation as a top designer. She won numerous awards and began to be sought after by people who previously only bought their clothes from European fashion houses. This program explores Miss Trigere's unique method of working, which often finds her spending long hours working on as many as 16 to 20 creations in one day. She never works from a sketch. Her designs evolve from her first draping fabric on a live model and then cutting or pinning it immediately into shape. While she works she is heard talking incessantly about what she is trying to achieve in the particular design and about the person who will someday wear it. Miss Trigere is seen at the Art institute in Chicago, where an exhibition of her designs from the past 20 years was held during the summer of 1966, in her office on Seventh Avenue in the heart of the garment district, and at her home in Connecticut where she relaxes, away from the tension and activity of the world of high fashion where a gown can cost up to $2,500 and be worn perhaps only once. The Creative Person: Pauline Trigere is a 1967 production of National Educational Television produced in association with Amram Novak Associates. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche) This series focuses on the private vision of the creative person. Each program is devoted to a 20th century artist whose special qualities of imagination, taste, originality, intelligence, craftsmanship, and individuality have marked him as a pace-setter in his field. These artists --- whose fields span the entire gamut of the art world --- include filmmaker Jean Renoir, poet John Ciardi, industrial designer Raymond Loewy, Hollywood producer-director King Vidor, noted Broadway couple Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, artist Leonard Baskin, humorist James Thurber, satirist Robert Osborn, Indian musician Ravi Shankar, poet P. G. Wodehouse, painter Georges Braque, former ballet star Olga Spessivtzeva, Rudolf Bing, and Marni Nixon. The format for each program has been geared to the individual featured; Performance, interview, and documentary technique are employed interchangeably. The Creative Person is a 1965 production of National Educational Television. The N.E.T. producers are Jack Sameth, Jac Venza, Lane Slate, Thomas Slevin, Brice Howard, Craig Gilbert, and Jim Perrin. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)