Sonja de Lennart - Fashion Career

Fashion Career

In 1945, after the war, Sonja de Lennart began to produce fashion wear and opened her first boutique, Salon Sonja, in Munich. Her fashion career began with a rare but fortunate circumstance when the fashion advisor of the Taylor’s Guild, M. Ponater, allowed de Lennart to exhibit one of her first creations (a hand painted dress which she painted herself and displayed on a mannequin) in one corner of Ponater’s booth of the leading Fashion Trade Fair, Handwerksmesse, where he was displaying and selling his own fashion collection. This one and only opportunity to show her talent had customers standing in line to place orders for which she wasn’t prepared. This event turned into the beginning of the distribution of de Lennart’s creations. The demand for her designs was so overwhelming that soon after, the family began to manufacture another of her creations, imitation leather vestures, as well as three-quarter length coats that were exhibited at the Craftsman Fair and distributed nationwide becoming a bestseller.

In that same year, she created a wide-swinging skirt with a wide belt (which she modeled herself), a blouse, and hat. Her design collection became known as the Capri Collection. She chose this name as it was her family’s love for the island of Capri that captivated her together with a recorded song sent to her by her family in America called, "Isle of Capri". Her love for this song and her increased fondness for the Island of Capri, gave her the inspiration of the Capri name.

In 1948, after years of women wearing the typical wide and rather masculine pants, de Lennart created the sexy tight three-quarter length Capri pants with the stylish short slit on the outer-side of the pant leg. The original classic Capri Pants were designed in specific lengths for winter and summer wear. In 1949, German actress, Mady Rahl, and Austrian actress, Erni Mangold, both posed for Sonja de Lennart in the original summer- and winter-style Capri pant, respectively.

In 1952, Edith Head recognized the innovative and revolutionary style of Sonja de Lennart and had her Capri Collection sewn by the Italian Fontana sisters for Audrey Hepburn in the movie, Roman Holiday. In 1953, Hubert de Givenchy had de Lennart’s Capri pants stitched for Audrey Hepburn, which she wore in the movie Sabrina (1954).

Edith Head introduced the Capri skirt, Capri blouse, Capri pants, and Capri belt to the world; but, it was the Capri pants that made history. Among the many who have worn the fashionable Capri pants are Doris Day, Jane Russell, Katharine Hepburn, Gina Lollobrigida, Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, and Mary Tyler Moore. Capri pants marched even in the Existentialist Bars from Saint-Germain-des-Pres in Paris: “Young women loved themselves in black roll necks, tight Capri pants, and flatties along with straight long hair and black-painted eyes a la Juliette Greco,” reported Professor Gundula Wolter (1994, 270).

Sonja de Lennart was also the first designer who utilized the famous Everglaze textile from America which her family from California sent to de Lennart upon her request. Subsequently, it developed into big business for the American manufacturer. The material was then licensed to European companies; as a result, foreign royalties accounted for more than 70 percent of the firm’s total profits.

In 1955 in Munich, Sonja de Lennart opened her new, much larger fashion house and renamed the company Maison Haase to include, in part, both her and her husband’s name. De Lennart’s fashion house became the place to be. Major movie companies, prominent opera directors, costume designers, and notables from all over the world traveled to Europe to acquire Sonja de Lennart’s design. Among those were Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, Curd Jürgens, and Klaus Kinski as well as nobles like the Countess of Stauffenberg; the Woolworth heir, Sunny von Bülow; Princess Auersperg and Queen Soraya Esfandiary, the wife of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, The 5th Dimension, and many others.

De Lennart became one of the most innovative European fashion designers after World War II influencing a whole generation of new designers and was considered a leading pioneer of her time by major magazines wherein she was interviewed along with legendary fashion designers as Yves Saint Laurent, Paco Rabanne, and André Courrèges. There was almost no fashion designer who did not add Capri pants to their collection.