Avery Trufelman

Claire said, I want to go to New York after high school.

And she's like, I want to make clothes.

Claire's father was baffled and would not allow it.

And I see where he was coming from.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire had just happened.

The garment industry in New York was not a glamorous thing.

It was a dangerous thing.

And because, as you know, at the time there were very few places that a young woman could live alone in New York City, Claire stayed in a place called the Three Arts Club.

And the Three Arts Club ended up being really vital for Claire's career because another woman who lived at the Three Arts Club connected Claire with a manufacturer and a designer named Robert Turk.

And Claire was being called like a gal.

But anyway, Claire began working with Turk.

That's just what was done.

But there were two ways to copy the designs from Paris.

The legal way to do it was you licensed it.

You could work with a couture house to buy an edition of a design to make a licensed copy.

This is what a lot of department stores did.

But the way everybody really did it in New York was they stole it.

New York designers would just go to a Paris runway show and memorize what they saw.

Claire hated this.

She was often told to go to Bergdorf's or Bloomingdale's and quote-unquote shop the store.