Description
In Depression-era Dallas, Elsie Frankfurt and Edna Frankfurt Ravkind raised five hundred dollars and launched a daring new enterprise, Page Boy Maternity Clothing – the first to engineer elegance in comfort. When Louise Franfurt Gartner joined the team, the sisters’ combined engineering, business, and PR genius made Page Boy the foremost maternity-clothing manufacturer in the United States. Dressing entertainment icons such as Loretta Young, Elizabeth Taylor, and Florence Henderson, Page Boy broke new ground in every direction. Innovative marketing and business strategies would make the Page Boy label internationally known and land the Frankfurt sisters celebrity in their own right. As a company, Page Boy would thrive till the end of the twentieth century, leaving a rich legacy in the histories of fashion and women in business.
“The remarkable Frankfurt sisters were entrepreneurs well ahead of their time, daring to embark in highly specialized niche in the worst of economic times – and succeeding on sheer creativity, determination, and, yes, even inflexibility. This is an illuminating study in fashion, family enterprise, and the trials and tribulations of women-owned businesses.” – Kay King, fashion designer
“The Page Boy Maternity fashion label is well known to those of us of a certain age. What we didn’t understand at the time was the importance of these women entrepreneurs and their trailblazing as the first to manufacture fashionable maternity clothing. Kay Goldman has filled that void in this fascinating slice of history.” – Frances B. Vick, co-author of Letters to Alice: Birth of the Kleberg-King Ranch Dynasty
Kay Goldman
Hard Cover
Texas Tech University Press
2013
164
