Mainbocher designed the US Navy WAVES uniform for free, then the Navy sold his name to recruits
Mainbocher was editor-in-chief of French Vogue (@voguemagazine) before he made a single garment. He left the masthead and opened a couture house at 12 avenue George V in Paris in November 1929, with very little formal training in making clothes. He dressed Wallis Simpson for the 1937 wedding and named the colour after her. Then in 1942 he designed the US Navy's WAVES uniform and charged nothing for it. The person who put his name forward was Josephine Ogden Forrestal, a former Vogue fashion editor, the Navy undersecretary's wife and one of his own clients. The Navy then marketed the designer back at recruits: recruitment advertising ran in Vogue and Glamour, and a Navy booklet gave five of its thirty-two pages to the uniform, naming him twice. The service peaked at 86,291 women in July 1945. He redesigned the Girl Scouts uniforms in 1948, and closed his house in 1971 at 81.