An Interview with Frank Perullo.
On May 9, 2020 an unexpected comment popped up from a user exploring the GRPM’s digital Collections:
“Hello, I am delighted to see one of my designs in your Museum. I am Frank Perullo, still live in NYC, and I turn 95 tomorrow (May 10, 2020). Thank you for including me in your Collection.”
Dress designed by Frank Perullo for the David Heart Inc. label (1954).
The GRPM’s Collections Curator, Andrea Melvin, followed up with the retired New York fashion designer to learn more about how he stumbled across the Museum’s digital Collections and to discuss his career in fashion design. At age 95, having worked in Manhattan’s garment district for decades, Frank shared fascinating stories and inspiring advice for budding fashion designers.
Andrea: What crossed your mind when you stumbled upon a dress you had designed in the GRPM’s digital Collections?
Frank: I was astonished to see a design from years ago in a museum collection. When I looked at the photo of the dress, I recalled very clearly the making of it and the specifics of the creation of the dress — from the designing, draping and cutting, to finally preparing the models to show the finished dress to the sales staff and buyers. The photo recalls to me the whole design and process that brought it to Mrs. Cole’s [the dress donor’s] closet. The organza fabric was made in America and based on colorful Indian saris that I found very beautiful and inspiring to me.
Having online access to fashion collections from a museum is invaluable to students and researchers who can survey the past and take inspiration from the whole history of clothing design. It never occurred to us when we were making the clothes so many decades ago that there would be a way to re-visit our creations and appreciate them all over again. Fashion was supposed to be, by nature, temporal and replaced in a season or two by a newer look. I enjoyed my time as a designer and took pleasure in making women look beautiful, but there is a new happiness in having the dresses accessible to newer audiences.
When I look back on that time and know that my creations are in a museum makes all of the years of study and hard work very worthwhile.
Andrea: When did you start designing and how long was your career?
Frank: My design career began in the late 1940s, but I started working in the mailing room of a Brooklyn department store and moved into window design in the mid-40s. After high school, I went to the Fashion Academy in NYC. Meanwhile, I worked in various shipping departments for sportswear companies in the Garment District and I free-lanced sketches for established designers. I was working at 525 Seventh Ave. and was doing some sketches when a buyer saw me at the drawing board. She suggested I call her sister, a top designer at a high-end fashion studio called Young American Deb. The woman arranged an appointment. The designer saw my sketches and gave me a small room with an assistant and a seamstress to work on a trial test. She then asked me to make three dresses, from design to completion. Two of those dresses, one in black crepe with bows at the back and another an evening dress in black taffeta with voluminous skirt (this was the time of Dior’s New Look) were immediate big sellers. I got the job!
Andrea: What was a highlight of your career?
Frank: I was hired by David Hart, who I worked for in the early 1950s, and created some of my best designs (including the one in your Collection). It was the most lucrative period of my career. In those days, the name of the company appeared on the label, but almost never the designer’s name. Owners wanted to keep their products within their own brand. That changed for me when the clothes began to sell unusually well. Dorothy Shaver, President of Lord & Taylor, noted the demand for my clothes in her store, and gave me “Dresses by Perullo” windows on Fifth Ave. She further requested that Hart put my name on the labels; she insisted that an Italian-named designer would make the clothes more promotable. That label identification got the Perullo label included in ads for my clothes in stores all over the country.
Andrea: Were there any challenges along the way?
Frank: I was fortunate enough to win some design awards and even had a single-designer show at the Plaza Hotel. With this sort of success I decided that the time was right to start my own label. But that is a very difficult proposition. It is not enough to have a creative eye and a vision for clothes and a name that buyers and store owners recognize. It is essential that a start-up business have a managing partner with an outstanding business/sales sense. Making beautiful clothes is only half of the equation. Getting those designs made on a budget and shown and distributed is the other part of the successful business.
Andrea: Do you have any thoughts on fashion today that’d you’d like to share with our readers?
Frank: The fashion industry has changed so much in the last 75 years. When I worked in Manhattan’s Garment District, we made clothes that were shipped around the country and around the world. Today’s dresses and most modern attire aren’t made in this country; they are imported. When I created evening gowns in the 40s and 50s, we designed the look on paper and draped the fabric to a dress that formed as the basis for the pattern-makers, then the cutters. All of this happened in one studio. Belts, zippers, buttons and other accessories were also available from hundreds of purveyors in the same few square block areas. The fact that the industry is no longer localized in a few industry centers probably makes it more difficult for the new design professionals.
Public taste is also very different than when I began. I designed for a more formal time. Women “dressed up” more compared with today when a very few occasions (e.g., weddings, proms) require a more elaborate look. Day-to-day attire doesn’t follow a prescribed look, dictated by a select few fashion gurus. Everything is more casual, made for ease of use and comfort and minimum maintenance.
Explore the GRPM’s Fashion Collection that includes 10,000 clothing and accessory pieces!
By: Andrea Melvin, the GRPM’s Collections Curator