What good is a Jewish viscountess to do when she has a title but no money, a party invitation but no clothes and a pair of scissors but no sewing skills?
Invent a poodle skirt, of course.
That, incidentally, is what Juli Lynne Charlot did in late 1947, in the process of creating a totem of midcentury material culture as evocative as the saddle shoe, the Hula-Hoop and the pink plastic lawn flamingo. .
Ms. Charlot, a New Yorker who died at age 101 on Sunday at her home in Tepoztlán, Mexico, was a Hollywood singer before she was married in the mid-1940s to a viscount, or British nobleman. Fashion conscious but hopeless with a needle, she stumbled upon a need for a pattern for a striking skirt that didn’t involve sewing: Take a large piece of solid-colored felt, cut it out in a wide circle, decorate it with lively appliquéd figures in contrasting colors , snip a hole in the middle and insert yourself.
The result, the embellished circle skirt, was ubiquitous throughout the 1950s, bought by women and, especially, young women. With its thick fabric that shimmers beautifully when the wearer spins, it’s perfect for a sock hop.
Over the years, the circular skirts of Ms. Charlot and his many imitators are decorated with a range of figurative appliqués, often consisting of small visual narratives. But since the most popular incarnation of the dress has images of poodles, all such skirts are commonly known as poodle skirts.
“When I was a teenager, every woman in the entire Western world wore a poodle skirt,” humorist Erma Bombeck wrote in a column in 1984. She defined it as “a skirt with enough fabric to… New Jersey slipcover with a big poodle emblazoned on it.”
Born of literal post-war prosperity – fabric was never in short supply – the poodle skirt merged seamlessly into 1950s youth culture, a set of cheerful rags that seemed to epitomize a happy time. Never mind the Cold War, the skirt seems to say: We’re gonna rock around the clock.
In later years, the poodle skirt became visual shorthand for the entire decade. Even today, a production of “Grease” or “Bye Bye Birdie” can hardly be mounted without one in evidence.
The daughter of Phillip and Betty (Cohen) Agin, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Ms. Charlotte was born Shirley Agin in Manhattan on Oct. 26, 1922.
When he was young, his family moved to Southern California. There, his father, an electrician, and his mother, an embroiderer, took their jobs in Hollywood studios.
“It’s easier to be poor in a pleasant climate,” said Ms. Charlot in 2017, at age 94, in an interview for this obituary covering her singing career (“I still have a voice, by the way”); his improbable stage appearance with the Marx Brothers (“I used to be so beautiful”); his passion for marriage and romance (“I was always in love with one person”); and her work as a self-taught fashion designer.
Young Shirley’s friends at school included entertainers-to-be such as the future Judy Garland, the future Ann Miller and the future Lana Turner. Possessing a beautiful soprano voice, she began taking voice lessons at age 13, determined to become an opera singer. “I will be the greatest exponent of Mozart,” he said.
Because she thought Shirley was an inappropriate name for a diva, she took the professional name Juli Lynne.
After graduating from Hollywood High School, he sang with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera and with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra. During World War II, he appeared with the Marx Brothers on a tour of military bases in the state.
Throughout the years of her performance, she designed her own wardrobe. Because she refused to learn to sew (“I didn’t want to be a drudge, like my mother”), she hired a seamstress to make her designs on fabric.
Ms. Charlot has no shortage of “celebrity admirers,” he said, including Harold Lloyd, Gary Cooper and Isaac Stern, the violinist.
He was married four times, “to two millionaires, a royal count and a son of a” — and here he pauses for dramatic effect — “baron.”
The first marriage, to the first millionaire, “doesn’t really count,” Ms. Charlotte. They broke up after three days.
Just after the war, he fled to Las Vegas with Philip Charlot, an officer in the British Royal Navy. The son of a French father and an English mother, he was also, he only learned later, a viscount.
At his request, she gave up her career, and settled into life as a stay-at-home viscountess. Her husband found work as a Hollywood film editor.
In December 1947, he was invited to a Hollywood Christmas party. She has nothing to wear and no money: Her husband recently lost his job.
A fairy godmother intervened in the person of Ms.’s mother. Charlot, who then had a small children’s clothing factory. She gave her daughter a wide sheet of white felt.
The scissors came out, and soon, Ms. Charlot herself in the middle of a white circular skirt.
“I made the hole using my brother’s slide rule: C = 2πr,” he said in 2017. He could sew well by hand to apply the green felt Christmas trees in the background.
“My mother had a cigar box full of little tchotchkes that she used in her work,” he said. “Those go on Christmas trees as decorations.”
The skirt was a “huge hit” at the party, she recalled.
She made several similar skirts and brought them to a Beverly Hills boutique. They are sold out.
After the holidays, the store requested an outdated design. He is the creator a tableau of dachshunds chasing the skirt. Once the dachshunds are sold, the store suggests he turned his attention to the poodle. French poodles were très chic at the time, and many customers owned them.
The poodles pummeled the dachshunds.
Ms. Charlotte had a poodle-skirt factory. She made skirts decorated with pictures of frogs and lily pads, Paris street scenes, running racehorses, flowing flowers and champagne glasses and pink elephantsincluding coordinating blouses, dresses, hats and handbags.
In the early 1950sher skirts sell for about $35 each — about $400 in today’s money.
Because the skill of Ms. Charlot in business was, by his own account, on a par with his tailoring, his factory floundering at first. “Mother took her diamond ring three weeks in a row to help me make ends meet,” he told the United Press news service in 1953.
But with the help of an investor — and orders from exclusive department stores, including Bullock’s Wilshire in Los Angeles, Neiman Marcus in Dallas and Bergdorf Goodman in New York — his future was assured.
Today, the skirts of Ms. Charlots are prized by vintage clothing collectors and can sell for many hundreds of dollars each.
Her marriage to her viscount did not last long. At the height of his success as a designer, he was summoned to tea by his mother. “The more successful you are, the less successful he is,” he recalled his mother-in-law saying. “You are ruining my son.”
Even though Ms. Charlot is his wife, he gave her a divorce, he said, so that he could regain his life.
The third marriage of Ms. Charlot, the second millionaire, ended up in divorce, as did her fourth, with the Mexican-born daughter of a German baron. He had no trouble telling her, he discovered, that he had been married to two women before and hadn’t bothered with a divorce.
He leaves no immediate family.
In the following years, Ms. Charlot, whose death was confirmed by her friend Carol Hopkins, created contemporary renditions of traditional Mexican wedding dresses. He has lived in Tepoztlán, south of Mexico City, since the 1980s.
At the height of the Swinging Sixties, the miniskirt put a premium on the poodle. But before that happened, a young woman was captured in a press photograph that betrayed the scope of Ms.’s work. Charlotte.
The time is 1951, and the place is Ottawa, where the woman is attending a hoedown at the home of Canada’s governor general. At 25, she had never seen a hoedown, and was tutored privately in its mysteries before the dancing began.
A girl, wearing a steel blue circular skirt by Ms. Charlot with hearts, blossoming branches and stylized figures of Romeo and Juliet, acquitted herself wonderfully, according to the news.
Her name is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, and she will be known from next year as Queen Elizabeth II.
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
