During Melbourne fashion designer Charlotte Blau’s heyday, her elegant dresses were sold in prestigious American boutiques such as Saks Fifth Avenue in New York.
In the 1950s and 1960s, his designs were prized by Melbourne society beauties and captured by photographers like Helmut Newton and Athol Shmith.
Gina Goldsmith in one of her late mother Charlotte Blau’s dresses.Credit:penny stephens
Fashion historian Tom McEvoy said Blau, who died in 1996, deserved recognition as one of Australia’s finest designers and her pieces should be preserved by the National Gallery of Victoria.
McEvoy called on those who own a Charlotte Blau piece to come forward. He’s only seen four since he started documenting Australian fashion history six years ago.
In the late 1950s, Blau and her husband, Willy Blau, ran her fashion brand, Charlotte Fifth Avenue Gown, from their Oliver Lane factory in Melbourne’s Flinders Lane fashion district.
They employed 26 machinists, 14 finishers, two pressers and two dispatchers, and they sold parts to Georges and Myer department stores and boutiques.
Charlotte Blau and her husband Willy Blau in the 1960s.Credit:Gina Goldsmith private collection
A few years earlier, a fire had destroyed the German immigrant’s first collection on the eve of its launch, which was to be held at the Menzies Hotel, when, exhausted, Blau had left the iron at his home in Heidelberg.
Blau did it again and in 1954 Charlotte Fifth Avenue dresses were launched. Within a few years, her husband had sold pieces to American stores such as Bullocks Wilshire in Los Angeles, where her dresses were on display in all six storefronts.
. Recognition wanted for creator mode pioneer Melbourne Charlotte Blue
. Soughtafter recognition pioneering Melbourne fashion designer Charlotte Blau
