Images from the past - fashion clip from Jacques Heim 1967. Paris, France

Jacques Heim, was a less flamboyant actor from the New Look Fashion Theatre, but has in his own way contributed to establish the new style. 

The Parisian couturier Jacques Heim (1899 - 1967) was an outsider in the 1950's explosion of the New Look created by Christian Dior and sustained by designers like Cristobal Balenciaga and Jacques Fath.
Jacques Heim, a tall and very good-looking man with a jovial temperament, seemed more like a business man or banker than a couturier. He exhibited none of the flamboyance of his competitors like Christian Dior or Yves Saint Laurent.

First Jacques Heim catalog Spring 1939

Jacques Heim drawings for his catalog  I Love this Dress 1939

Jacques Heim evening dress 1946

Caroline Rennolds Milbank in her book "Couture -1985) called Jacques Heim an innovator by nature.  While the international fashion press at that period did not regard Jacques Heim as a leading designer, it makes no doubts that the designer had an real influence on the scene. The collection 'Heim Jeunes Filles - Heim Young Girls in 1930 and the 1937 " Heim Actualite Girls" wear collection were both a source of inspiration for the later designers of the 1950's and 1960's.

The New Look  top model Dorian Leigh posing with  the fragrance J'Aime.

After the success of the fragrance Alambie in 1947, Jacques Heim created and produced some well known and today considered as top perfumes like  J'Aime (1958) and Shandoah (1966). The J'Aime  perfume was the inspiration for the famous Christian Dior J'Adore.
Not really driven by the market he was at least keenly sensitive to it and he had the honor of being the President of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture between 1958 and 1962. In 1950 he published his own magazine 'Revue Heim"
Jacques Heim was a smart, eclectic designer of many styles. His privileged clients, Madame Charles de Gaulle or Mrs Dwight D. Eisenhower and actress Gloria Swanson were adoring this exceptional gentleman.

Jacques Heim on the French Vogue cover 

Top model Dorian Leigh and New Look icon  in a evening dress

Through consistent sales sensibility he has formed, persevered and prospered a stylish fashion house for nearly 40 years. The house Jacques Heim was closed in 1969

The New Look signatures by Christian Dior, Jacques Fath and Jacques Heim

New in the 1950's

Jacques Heim dress photographed by Willy Maywald

Jeunes Filles Collection, the spirit of the 1950's

Jacques Heim invented the bikini and called his beach collection after the "Atol Bikini " a  US nuclear experiment spot in the Pacific.

The Bikini was forbidden on the American Beaches considered as outrageous scandalous !.