Pola Stout

Josefine Pola Stout (née Weinbach, January 8, 1902 – October 12, 1984) was an American designer best known for creating fine woolen fabrics.

Wolfgang and Pola Hoffmann became a prominent interior design team that contributed to the development of American modernism in the early 20th century.

[3] As a child she befriended dressmakers and used the scraps from their cutting tables to fashion clothing for her dolls, which she displayed in a window facing the street.

[4][5]: 551 During her four years of study at the Kunstgewerbe Schule, Pola Weinbach designed textiles for the Wiener Werkstätte[4] and worked for Sigmund Freud, repairing a Gobelin tapestry.

The couple immigrated to the United States, and after nine months with Urban they formed their own independent design partnership with offices on Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

In 1931 they contributed an office interior to a large and important exhibition by AUDAC members, organized by Wolfgang Hoffmann and Kem Weber at the Brooklyn Museum.

[6][13]: 88, 296 [14] The Hoffmanns often made opportunities to exhibit their work, and created contemporary American furnishings and interiors for shops, restaurants,[8] and private clients including Mrs. Otto C. Sommerich and Helena Rubinstein.

"[4] High Meadow Loom[3] supplied the top fashion houses in New York City[4] and created collections for Dunhill and Otterburn in Great Britain.

Based on quality, beauty, durability and classic styling, the simple plan built an enduring wardrobe that expressed the owner's personality.

"She weaves with the skill of a composer of symphonies, with the imagination of an artist trying to capture a misty blue morning haze, and with the integrity of a completely honest person.

"[34] Stout created fabric collections for name designers including Elizabeth Hawes,[38] Muriel King,[39] Mainbocher,[40][41]: 70  Jo Copeland, Christian Dior, Edith Head, Norman Norell,[30] Clare Potter, Edward Molyneux,[24] Valentina,[5]: 266  Philip Mangone, Vincent Monte-Sano, Pauline Trigère,[34] Zuckerman & Kraus[32] and Irene.

[44][45]: 74–75 "In his quest to use unique textiles," wrote the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Adrian frequently incorporated those of designer Pola Stout, whose fabrics often featured blocks and stripes of color.

Adrian found Stout's geometric patterns well-suited to his pieced garments where he employed a favorite technique of manipulating striped fabrics to make them serve a dual purpose, as structure and as ornament.

[48][49] After visiting Hyde Park in 1940, Stout had a navy-and-ivory plaid woolen shirt made for President Franklin D. Roosevelt,[50] who wore it during the war.

[83] Direct references to Pola Stout Inc. appear in the 1949 novel, The Second Confession (chapter 6), in which Madeline Sperling wears "a soft but smooth wool dress of browns and blacks that looked like a PSI fabric", and in the 1969 novel Death of a Dude (Chapter 3) in which Archie Goodwin "rinsed off and changed to a PSI shirt and brown woolen slacks".

Pola Stout fabric label
Aline Fruhauf 's 1941 caricature portrait of Pola Stout is part of the National Portrait Gallery collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. [ 46 ]