Avery Trufelman

And then Claire just needed a job.

Hattie Carnegie was not actually related to steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.

That's exactly what she'd want you to think.

She was just a Jewish immigrant who changed her last name to something that sounded impressive.

So I'm sort of obsessed with her.

She's kind of iconic.

But ultimately, Hattie Carnegie was more of a society lady who liked to fancy herself a designer.

The two women did not go well together.

Hattie Carnegie was overseeing a precision, glamorous tailoring shop, and Claire McCardle was a modernist, deconstructing clothes to their simplest forms.

It was not a fit.

Like, for example, a Broadway actress who had come to Hattie Carnegie was apoplectic that Claire McCardle designed her a simple, pared-down dress.

Hattie Carnegie's customers wanted sequins and beads and found Claire's things too plain for the money.

Carnegie knew her customers wanted to be poured and stitched right into their clothes.

So Hattie Carnegie was miffed when Claire won a contest in the 1939 World's Fair.

But a weird benefit of working for society lady Hattie Carnegie was this.

I mean, it was kind of a dumb move.

Like, they kind of went to Paris as World War II was breaking out.

Everyone was taking World War II very lightly.

An attache at the French embassy speculated, the Germans will attack this spring and be stopped.

Then the Hitler machine will collapse.