03/08/2024
Juli Lynn Charlot 1922 - 2024
Juli Lynne Charlot, born Shirley Agin in New York in 1922, grew up in Hollywood and was a singer with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra during the War before marrying.
In December 1947, she was invited to a Christmas party but had nothing suitable to wear. She also couldn’t sew - her mother had been a Jewish immigrant who sewed for a living “I didn’t want to be a drudge, like my mother,” Ms. Charlot said in a 1994 interview. She found a wide piece of felt and cut a circle, with a hole in the middle for her waist. She then decorated the front with appliques of Christmas trees for the holiday theme. The result was a long, full skirt in the New Look style popularized by Christian Dior earlier that year.
Her homemade skirt was a hit at the party and so she began to make similar skirts that she sold through a Beverly Hills boutique for around $35.00 each (the equivalent of about $400 today). One of her later designs featured a poodle, which leant its name to the generic style - ‘poodle skirt’ - as quintessentially a symbol of the 1950s as Rock and Roll and Hula Hoops.
