Lady Duff-Gordon (Lucile)

Lucile was the label; the woman behind it was Lucy Christiana Sutherland, later Lady Duff-Gordon (1863-1935), a London dressmaker whose house was best known for lingerie, tea gowns and evening wear. Between 1893 and 1922 she built Lucile into the first leading couture house with full branches in three countries, and she is credited with training the first professional fashion models and staging the first runway shows.

Maison Lucile, 24 Old Burlington Street

She was born in London on 13 June 1863. Before she had premises she worked from home, and in 1893 she opened Maison Lucile at 24 Old Burlington Street in the West End. The business was incorporated as Lucile Ltd in 1903 and moved in 1904 to 23 Hanover Square. Branches followed in New York in 1910, Paris in 1911 and Chicago in 1915.

Lady Duff-Gordon and Lucile lingerie

Lingerie was at the center of the house's reputation, not a sideline. Lucile "promoted alluring and pared-down lingerie", launched slit skirts and low necklines, and popularized less restrictive corsets. Its signature was layered, draped garments in soft fabrics of blended pastel colors, often trimmed with sprays of handmade silk flowers.

The old version of this page went further, saying she freed women from the corset and was the first to put color on underwear. The sources say something more modest: she loosened the corset rather than abolishing it, and she made the underlayer something to be looked at. The tea gown, a loose dress for receiving at home, sat in the same territory between underwear and clothes.

Gowns with names

Lucile's dresses were given descriptive names drawn from literature, history, popular culture and her own interest in the psychology and personality of her clients. Later writers call them "emotional gowns". Naming a garment rather than numbering it is common now. It was not then.

The mannequin parades

Her most lasting invention may be the fashion show. Lucile ran invitation-only, tea-time presentations with a stage, curtains, mood lighting, a string band, souvenir gifts and printed programs. The women who walked in them were trained in-house, and she is widely credited with turning the house model into a profession.

She also wrote about clothes for a large public. From 1910 to 1922 she produced a weekly syndicated fashion page for the Hearst newspapers, and from 1912 to 1922 she wrote monthly columns for Harper's Bazaar and Good Housekeeping.

1912 and 1922

In April 1912 she survived the sinking of the Titanic in Lifeboat No. 1, which carried 12 people against a capacity of 40, and the circumstances of that escape caused controversy at the time.

The business did not outlast the decade. By September 1922 she had stopped designing for Lucile, and the company effectively closed. She went on working from private premises and with smaller retail ventures, and died in Putney, London, on 20 April 1935, aged 71. A generation later Christian Dior pulled the waist back in with the New Look of 1947, and fashion went back to building the figure from underneath.

Last updated October 7, 2026