Early Life
Simone Parmentier was born in Paris on 18 May 1912 to middle-class Catholic parents. She was apprenticed to one of the main Paris milliners of the 1920s and 1930s, Rose Valois. She had a talent for designing headwear to suit the wearer's face, and considered her first success to be a hat exactly suited to her mother's difficult face. She then worked with the couturiere Elsa Schiaparelli, who was renowned for her bold millinery designs and concepts.
Her suitor, whom she met whilst in her early 20s, was a Jewish communist medical student called Serge Mirman. His background made him unacceptable to Simone's parents, so the couple eloped to London in 1937, despite neither speaking English. They would not actually marry until 1939. Simone headed the hat department of Schiaparelli's London branch in Upper Grosvenor Street, Mayfair until it closed down in 1939. However, Schiaparelli generously gave her former employee the contact details of her English clientele. This would prove invaluable for launching Simone's own-label millinery career.
Read more about this topic: Simone Mirman
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