Eleanor Brenner, a Pioneer of Petites Fashion, Dies at 89
Designer Eleanor Brenner, an early champion of petites fashion, day-into-evening dressing and washable silks, died April 2 at the age of 89.
She succumbed to esophageal cancer surrounded by her family at home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, according to her son Anthony.
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Born Eleanor Meyerson in Manhattan, she built a signature business and spent much of her life in the city where she was born. In 1966, Brenner was considered to be the first designer to create ready-to-wear for petite women with individualized silhouettes that were then the antithesis of commercial Seventh Avenue styles. A few years later she helped to usher in day-into-evening styles, another new category. And long before at-ease dressing for WFHers had become a reality, Brenner spoke of comfortable clothes for women who work in an office or at home. But her influential trajectory was not a calculated one.
After earning a degree at New York University, she started her career with an entry-level post at Bloomingdale’s. The experience turned out to be fortuitous — she met her future husband Richard, who worked in merchandising there. The couple wed in the mid-1950s, starting what would be a 56-year marriage and a powerful fashion union. Together they launched the women’s dress business Brenner Couture in 1968. By 1979, they had built a $10 million company.
Understanding that the fashion business changed very 10 weeks, they were known to do a large amount of research to determine what was good for their company and the stores they sold clothes to. “We control our growth by thinking realistically about who we have sold to in the past, what volume we’ve done with them and whether their customer has changed. You have to have a gut feeling and there is a certain amount of gambling. But we have to think clinically, demographically and economically about our business,” she told WWD in 1988.
In a joint interview with the Brenners, WWD described the hyper-energetic, intense designer as someone who “generally talks and moves as if she’s barely got five minutes to catch a plane.” With a husband, two teenagers, three collections, a household to run, hundreds of things to do and friends to see, she explained she was born crazy.
Neat, slender and 5 feet, 3 inches, Brenner designed clothes that didn’t just suit her but also legions of other petite women, whose physiques were not a focus for most Seventh Avenue labels and designer companies at that time. By her own account, her decision to do so boiled down to the fact that “there just weren’t chic clothes for short people.”
The Brenners built a multimillion-dollar business primarily because the clothes flattered and fit. “A woman should never have to posture her clothes. I hate that,” she told WWD in 1974. “Clothes should just flow so that a woman can concentrate on the conversation, the people and the time around her.”
Tactile in her approach, she studied clothing construction and patternmaking with a hearty dose of self-analysis. Determined to convey a look of being taller and elegant, she examined the proportions of demure women and deduced that petites were cut in half with equal length from shoulder to waist and waist to toes. “The big problem is to overcome looking chunky,” she explained to WWD in 1966.
To avoid getting lost in a misproportioned look or becoming a “halved-off figure,” Brenner favored two-part styles, especially skinny coats or jackets paired with a dress or skirt. Precise shaping was key, with Brenner preferring longer tops and shoulders cut high to give an illusion of added height. Anything fussy was off limits for petites from her point of view. Nubby tweeds with printed silks and real antique buttons were more her style to relay a French dressmaker feel. Coco Chanel, “the great classicist” as far as Brenner could see, was a source of inspiration.
Expecting a child, Brenner studied part time at the Fashion Institute of Technology and did some interior decorating on the side. Once she earned a degree, no one wanted to hire her, deeming her clothes “very plain and simple.” She started designing clothes for herself just for the fun of it. After clients kept asking where her clothes came from, she started designing pieces for a few of them. The former coat and suit executive Arthur Jablow spurred her on. While redecorating his home, he complimented her fashion know-how, dubbed her “a scientist for the small woman” and advised that she really had a design concept.
Another stroke of happenstance was caused by Henri Bendel’s glass-ceiling shattering executive Geraldine Stutz, who asked a Brenner-clad friend about her attire. That led to Stutz recruiting the designer to create a collection for The Bendel Fancy shop in 1966. In 1967, the Brenners ventured into business with a third partner that proved to be a financial disaster, based on WWD coverage at that time. The husband-and-wife team dropped the partner and started Brenner Couture the following year “with minus nothing.” Her husband bought the piece goods and handled shipping. The designer did the store deliveries and they spent Saturdays cleaning the company’s showroom. Over time, they added Brenner Bees for knitwear and La Chemiserie for Italian separates.
As for the challenge of working and living with your business partner, Brenner once explained its advantages. “You can have a quarrel with your husband and not speak for days; you can’t afford to do that with a business partner.”
The Brenners also were wonderful entertainers, hosting dinners at home with friends like the fashion designers Kasper, Jacques Artel and Chester Weinberg, as well as Hollywood producer Walter Boxer and Broadway composer Moose Charlap. Brenner would dress for such occasions with signature style, such as a lace dress with a matching turban. She turned her writing and culinary skills into a cookbook titled, “Gourmet Cooking Without Salt.”
Brenner was among the designers whose creations were featured in the first official salute to American fashion — the Suiting Everyone Bicentennial exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in 1974. Political fundraising was another pursuit, as was philanthropic fundraising for the charity she founded in 1986 called “A New Beginning,” which supported women and children who had suffered abuse.
Years after closing their company and taking a three-year hiatus, the Brenners returned to Seventh Avenue with another company that had three divisions — Eleanor P. Brenner bridge sportswear, EPB Busy weekendwear and TPR progressive sportswear. The designer’s son described her as a visionary with “perfect-pitch, photographic memory.” Her “three-dimensional ability to envision things” could be applied to clothing, home [decor] or just about anything else, he said.
After exiting the fashion industry in 1993, the couple later relocated to Santa Fe. In 2003, she and her husband founded First Serve-New Mexico, an after-school program that blends athletics, academics and life skills. To date, 1,100 public school children have benefited and a $12 million complex is now being built. “Deeply passionate” about the children of Santa Fe, especially those who had grown up under more challenging circumstances, her son said, “She wanted every person to fulfill [their] full potential. That is what drove her for the past 20 years.”
In 1988, Brenner described her “unbounding and unlimited energy” as a gift from God, explaining, “I don’t want to miss or waste one minute of it. I want to make a difference.”
Predeceased by her husband in 2013 and her brother Martin Meyerson, Brenner is survived by her son and a daughter, Patricia Brenner Jackson.
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