Carven

Marie-Louise Carven (31 August 1909 – 8 June 2015), born Carmen de Tommaso, was a French fashion designer who founded the house of Carven in 1945. She was noted for her designs for petite women, her use of lightweight fabrics such as lace and pink gingham, and for being one of the first couturieres to launch a prêt-à-porter line.[5] She was the first Paris designer to patent a push-up bra.

Marie-Louise Carven was born Carmen de Tommaso on 31 August 1909 in Châtellerault, France. However, she strongly disliked her given name, and when she founded her business, she assumed the name by which she is better known. Carven showed an interest in fashion design from a young age by making outfits for her pet cat.

As a young woman, Carven studied architecture and interior decor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

In the 1940s, she employed the Romanian Jew Henry Bricianer in her shop in Paris despite antisemitic Vichy laws. When the police came for Bricanier, she hid him in the building where her shop was, and allowed him to continue his work. As well, she allowed four members of Bricanier's family to live with her own relatives; this enabled them and Henry to survive until the end of World War II.

She had a chateau in Chantilly, where she kept kangaroos and peacocks, and a summer house on the Riviera.

Carven died in Paris on 8 June 2015, aged 105.

In 1945, at the age of 34, Carven opened her fashion house on the Champs-Élysées. The name Carven combined Carmen, her given name, w…