“I was horrified.” That”s how Carole Hochman recalls her reaction when, as a 19-year-old design student at Drexel University, she was assigned an internship in the lingerie department at Bergdorf Goodman. “All the other [fashion] students got great jobs—they were in eveningwear and coats and suits,” she says. “I got stuck in lingerie. I thought, “What did I do wrong to deserve this?””
What seemed like punishment back in 1964, of course, turned out to be kismet of the highest order. Little did Hochman know that she was at the beginning of a powerhouse career, on her way to becoming a grande dame of the innerwear industry, alongside luminaries like Eileen West and Josie Natori.
“I went straight to the woman in human resources,” Hochman remembers, “and told her, “You”ve got to take me out of this. I”m a fashion designer—what am I going to learn?””
The precise answer she received was not recorded, but history provides one nonetheless. Fast-forward to 2005, when Hochman”s concern, now a $150 million company she heads as chairman and design director, celebrates its 75th year in business. “The buyer [I worked with] taught me so much about what I know now,” Hochman says. “I will never forget her.”
The Carole Hochman Design Group, which began life as Chevette Inc. in 1930, remains at the top of its game. There”s the impressive stable of licensees—Oscar de la Renta, Betsey Johnson, Ralph Lauren, Esprit, Jockey, Stan Herman, Nine & Co. by Nine West—with diverse identities that say as much about the company”s strength as its sales figures do; there”s the longevity, through years of retail failures and consolidation as the number of innerwear players waned from the hundreds to the handful, and then a hint of small-screen celebrity for the woman sitting at the helm. In 1970, Hochman appeared on the game show “What”s My Line,” eventually stumping the panel, including Arlene Francis and Bennett Cerf, from guessing her vocation. And, yes, that is Hochman herself pitching her eponymous wares every two months on QVC.
The designer”s own life story is no less screen-worthy. Nancy Kissinger, Lady Bird Johnson and Barbra Streisand all make guest appearances.
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All this because a certain Los Angeles-born, Philadelphia-bred girl stayed the course at Bergdorf”s lingerie department, despite the fact that she knew nothing about the goods and spent her first few days on the job in tears. “But I turned adversity into advantage,” Hochman says, demonstrating the up-by-the-bootstraps attitude that”s been instrumental in her company”s success. “You do what you have to do. I used to work fulfilling the Christmas catalogue orders,” she recalls. “Talk about vintage! I grew up with vintage ways of doing things, fulfilling each order one piece at a time from the stock in the department store. At that time, all the stock was kept in drawers. It was all so beautiful and elegant—it was the way lingerie used to be. There was nothing hanging, unless it was behind closed doors.”
Hochman remembers her run-in with Babs one day on the selling floor of the store. “Barbra came in to buy a half-slip,” she recalls, “and I asked her if she”d like to go in the dressing room. She said, “No,” and just pulled up her skirt and tried it on right in the middle of Bergdorf”s. I thought, “Whoa. This is modern, right?””
Hochman made her own impression on the department”s buyer, Betty Hughes, who asked her to return the following year. She declined—her heart was in design, not retail. So, Hughes made a few phone calls and set Hochman up with a manufacturing company called Character Lingerie, which would lead to another twist of fate.
“All of the facilities [for Character] were in Puerto Rico,” Hochman remembers, “so I was the only creative person here in New York. There was no one to learn from, so I wasn”t sure what I was supposed to do.” That didn”t stop a Bonwit Teller buyer from approaching Hochman and asking her if she was interested in creating a new lingerie line for the store.
“I didn”t even know where to begin,” Hochman says, looking back now in amusement. “I didn”t even know where to get the materials.” She ended up calling American Fabrics, the first company listed under “textiles” in the yellow pages, and ordered “stripes and dots—always a safe thing.” She then sent her fabric selections and sketches to Puerto Rico. “I don”t even know how they made them,” she admits.
They did, though, and Bonwit sold them. “There was a full-page ad in The New York Times! Here I was, a junior in college, and I thought I was a real lingerie designer because I had my own ad in the Times.”
Only a few years later, Hochman would receive even greater validation, designing for Christian Dior Lingerie, having lunches with former Dior chairman and chief executive officer Jacques Rouët and frequent meetings with then-designer Marc Bohan, whom she describes as “very French, very refined and very elegant. I never met more of a gentleman.”
But first there would be a lesson in humility. In 1967, Hochman arrived at Chevette Inc., fresh out of college and brimming with confidence. The reality of being a workaday designer, unfortunately, soon set in: “I had to cut, sew, drape, make patterns—everything I hadn”t done in my glamorous workings at Character,” she says, “because there I just sent my sketches away, and somebody else made them.
“The very first pattern I did, I forgot to leave an opening for it to get on the mannequin,” she recalls. “All the sewers were looking at me like, OK, where did you come from?” A day later, her salary was cut in half, from $150 a week to $75.
Still, the girl from Philly stayed the course once more and soon became the sole designer for the Dior license Chevette had acquired in 1964—a position she would hold for the next 30 years. “I got [pay] increases quickly after that,” she notes with a laugh.
There was a major turning point in 1971 when she married Chevette”s owner, Neal Hochman, whose father, Sol, had founded the company with Max Saffir. (At the time, though, Saffir was replaced by Sol”s wife, Peggy, his shares having been bought out in 1949. It was Peggy”s sister, ready-to-wear designer Mollie Parnis, who would bring in clients like Kissinger, Johnson and Anne Douglas.)
In 1974, the Hochmans sold the company to the publicly traded Harwood, though they remained active in design and management. In 1980, they regained control through a leveraged buyout, and six years later, renamed the business Carole Hochman Designs. Through it all, the offices and showrooms have remained at 135 Madison Avenue, and only an occasional facelift here and there attests to the changing hands and times.
“I”ve seen the industry change,” Hochman says, thinking back over her career. “When I came into it, lingerie was not considered fashion. It was sort of hidden away, and people didn”t talk much about it.” It wasn”t until Bloomingdale”s Sighs and Whispers catalogue in the Seventies that the landscape for innerwear began to change, she says. Photographed by Guy Bourdin, the catalogue was provocative and dramatic, and Hochman maintains it transformed lingerie into the come-hither intimates of today. Victoria”s Secret gets a nod from Hochman as well, for “bringing fashionable innerwear to every woman in the country.”
Nowadays, Carole Hochman has settled into her stride. Although she”s divorced from Neal, he remains in the company as ceo, splitting his time between Florida and New York. Their daughter, Sara Allard, continues the family tradition; she”s creative director in charge of graphics and marketing. And while the license with Dior expired in 1998, Hochman is busy with seven others, in addition to her own label.
“Everything we do comes together as a pie,” she says of the various labels under the Carole Hochman umbrella. “I don”t have any two lines that have the same customer profile or the same thought behind them.” The range runs from the young, kicky spunk of Betsey Johnson to the subdued glamour of Oscar de la Renta. “It”s thrilling for me to work with them, because their identities are so clear,” she says. “I love to take their philosophy and turn it into what I know about lingerie.” Each collection has its own design team, ensuring that the signature identity stays its own. And at the end of the day, Hochman oversees it all, “so there”s no confusion. The teams do what they do, but I see everything that”s done here.
“I know my products,” she adds, “like you know your children. I”ve devoted my whole life to this, and it”s not been for any other reason than I loved it.”