Irene Saltern

Irene Saltern (1911–2005, born Irene Stern) was an American costume designer and fashion designer. Named one of the top seven costume designers of the Golden Age of Hollywood by the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999, Saltern dressed more than 150 actresses in more than 50 films. She later spent 37 years working in commercial fashion design and is known for fashion innovations such as coordinated women's separates and bringing the California “sportswear” fashion aesthetic to wider markets.

Early years

On January 30, 1911, Irene Saltern was born in Berlin to Jewish parents, Adolf Stern and Elsbeth Salomon Stern. The Stern family had a summer home in Caputh, Germany, where Albert Einstein and his wife were neighbors and close family friends. Einstein taught Irene to sail as a teenager and later attended her engagement party in 1932.

After high school, Saltern attended art schools and universities in Berlin and Paris, studying fashion design (dressmaking, fabrics and materials, and color composition) and news and fashion writing. While still in school, she designed the Venus bathing suits for the Maratti Company. were fired for being Jewish. Between 1933 and 1936, she travelled throughout Europe and neighboring countries while working for newspapers, magazines, and broadcasting stations. She wrote fashion and women's advice columns and reported on people, fashions, sports, and society in French, English, and German, under the professional name Saltern, a combination of Salinger and Stern.

In late 1937, Saltern was hired as a costume designer at Republic Pictures, where she created costumes for 34 movies in less than two years. Between 1940 and 1942, she was head of wardrobe design at Samuel Goldwyn Pictures as well as worked on films for the Paramount, Hal Roach, Frank Lloyd, Universal, and Columbia studios. During this period, she worked with directors including Alfred Hitchcock and Jack Skirball and designed costumes for Vivien Leigh, Cary Grant, Margaret Sullavan, Martha Scott, Olivia de Havilland, and dancer Ann Miller, among other actors.

World War II era

When the US War Production Board issued guidelines for clothing rationing in 1942 (General Limitation Order L-85), the board invited Hollywood designers, including Saltern, to create fashions that complied with the new restrictions on fabric. Saltern's designs for the contest were then used for Priscilla Lane's costumes in Hitchcock's film Saboteur. Also in this period, she began designing commercially, including frocks for the Hollywood Premiere label and overalls for Sun Rose. This technique was used in Hollywood costume design to counteract the lens distortion effect caused by wide-angle cameras.

Saltern is known for introducing career pantsuits for women and both the designs and merchandising concept for women's coordinated separates in the 1940s and 1950s. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum, and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A collection of clothing designed by Saltern as well as family archival material is held in the Jewish Museum Berlin.