The illegitimate child of a dressmaker in south-west France, Jenny Sacerdote went on to run one of the world’s biggest fashion empires of the early 20th century. Yet she fell into oblivion. Nearly a century later, her avant-garde designs and entrepreneurial spirit have inspired a French stylist to tell her story and bring some of the frocks back to the catwalk.
Sacerdote dressed the likes of the Empress of Japan, silent-picture actress Mary Pickford and French tennis ace Suzanne Lenglen. In the US, where she was known simply as “Jenny”, her little grey suit became as famous as Chanel’s little black dress.
“She was really famous in her time, she had an amazing career, but nobody ever wrote about her,” says stylist Anne Vogt, who spent five years ploughing through family and historical archives to publish the first biography of Sacerdote.
And what a story there is to tell.
Born Jeanne Adele Bernard in 1868, she was 39 before she turned her head to fashion, following in the humble footsteps of her single mum and her grandmother – both of whom were dressmakers.
She left rural Dordogne for Paris and studied under famed designer Jeanne Paquin. After just two years, in 1909, she opened her own House of Jenny on rue Castiglione in the heart of the capital.
By 1914 she had 22 workshops on the Champs-Elysées, employing a staff of 1,000.
Listen to an interview with Anne Vogt on the Spotlight on France podcast:
An innovative look
“She famously said: ‘clothes should be worn, not kept in a glass display case’,” notes Vogt, who highlights her simplified, asymmetric lines.
In fact, Jenny was one of the first couturiers to design comfortable but elegant clothes for women, years before Chanel got in on the game.
“Her clothes helped women to be free and to feel free because they could move how they wanted,” says Vogt. “She shaped them to fit her clients’ bodies. Every piece was unique. One client, one dress.”
She became known for her boat necks (“Jenny's neckline”), coat dresses, gauntlet cuffs and loosely knotted scarves. Silk was her preferred fabric, for its elegance and comfort.
Her designs won the Parisian fashion industry’s coveted Grand Prize for Elegance in both 1927 and 1928.
Entrepreneurial spirit
Building up a fashion empire at the outbreak of World War I seems like a tall order. But Jenny had a flair for business.
While the economy in France nosedived, she looked abroad, sending her drawings to dealers in Spain, Japan, Australia and the US – countries that were not at war – “so they could recreate the garments exactly as she wanted”, says Vogt.
“In the US she could sell one drawing to 16 different dealers,” she says admiringly.
She showed similar creativity in dealing with fabric shortages, “making dresses entirely out of ribbon or using just strips”, or adapting her designs to incorporate offcuts.
Easy to reproduce, “Jenny” became the most imported Parisian label in the US during WWI.
Independent woman
While Jenny’s marriage to businessman Achille Sacerdote helped grow her haute couture house, Vogt says she was very much her own woman.
“Society was managed by the Napoleonic Code at the time, which meant, roughly speaking, that women couldn’t do anything,” Vogt notes. “But she put up the money, negotiated the bank loan, et cetera. She wanted to manage and decide things.”
When, in 1917, young female garment workers known as “midinettes” went on strike over threatened cuts to wages and weekend work, Jenny’s house could have fallen.
But she deployed her skills as a manager and, after negotiating with the Ministry of Industry and the Paris Fashion Federation, secured a good deal for the women.
She also showed an interest in defending workers’ and especially women’s rights, creating a canteen for all her employees – “the first in the fashion industry”, Vogt points out.
In 1926, Jenny was made a knight of the Legion of Honour for services to fashion, becoming only the second woman to receive the award, after her mentor Paquin in 1913.
Asked about the honours, she said: “I was not even born in the business. And I have never been a working girl. In fact I studied to become a history professor. I was utterly bored by it all, so I just let it drop and entered a big dressmaker’s to learn the trade.
“One day I set myself up in business, and that’s all.”
Refusal to collaborate
But the House of Jenny did not survive World War II.
Unlike her contemporary Coco Chanel, whose alleged connections to the occupying Nazi regime allowed her business not only to weather the storm but thrive, Jenny could not bring herself to collaborate.
Her husband Achille was Jewish.
“In 1941 they got divorced because he loved her so much and wanted to save her, but it wasn’t enough,” says Vogt.
“She was also very patriotic, she represented France all over the world, during the 1915 San Francisco exhibition, the Zurich exhibition, the New York fashion festival. She wasn’t into collaborating with the occupiers.”
She closed her business in 1940, left Paris for Nice on the Cote d’Azur, and published a fake death certificate.
When the war ended, she tried to make a comeback with an assistant and associate but it didn’t work out. In 1948, the House of Jenny closed its shutters for good.
Jenny died in Nice in 1962, aged 94.
Without children, there were no heirs to carry on her legacy.
Strong whiff of wartime scandal clings to Coco Chanel
Jenny, the sequel
No heirs, but a torchbearer.
Not only has Vogt brought Jenny’s story to the fore, she’s giving new life to those 1920s and '30s garments through her label “La Suite Jenny Sacerdote” – slightly adjusting the original designs for the 21st-century woman.
Like Jenny, Vogt uses mainly silk (from Lyon), but also cotton and denim upcycled in Paris. All the fabrics come from the ends of rolls to keep costs down and encourage a more sustainable approach to fashion.
The spirit of fluid, simple lines allowing women a maximum of freedom remains intact.
Vogt points to a dress that can equally be worn with trainers, to give it a more contemporary feel.
“Jenny was ahead of her time and she’s still modern today. It’s remarkable how her styles haven’t aged a bit.”
This story was produced as part of the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 113.
