By Pam Sander
Storyteller and LaMonaGirl Shop owner
I recently sold my only Joan Leslie piece, an olive bronze jacket from the 1970s-’80s. I thought only Members Only appreciated the fitted zip-up look at that time, but not so.
The Joan Leslie label was part of the much larger Leslie Fay fashion house, which I wrote about in a previous post (Milliner Fred Heeded Call). Interestingly, the lead designer for Joan Leslie and eventual vice president of Leslie Fay was Herbert Kasper. I did not know this when I was first drawn to Leslie Fay and Joan Leslie last year.
Kasper started designing for Leslie Fay’s founder, Fred Pomerantz, after studying at couture fashion houses in Paris — Jacques Fath, Christian Dior and Marcel Rochas. Those jobs had followed World War II service in the U.S. Army, which he left New York University to do. Once overseas, he was assigned to design costumes for the troupe shows.
Kasper led the Joan Leslie division for nearly 15 years before his name was added to a label. I’m on the hunt for a pair of those “Kasper for Joan Leslie” jeans. Later, he created Kasper A.S.L., adding some color to the padded-shoulder powersuits that career women needed in the 1980s and ‘90s. LaMonaGirl Shop has two vintage Kasper suits (pictured) that reflect his colorful vision.
The black Kasper skirt suit with red accents and black beading is late 1980s-early 1990s. The light green suit is from later in the ’90s, after Kasper started the Kasper A.S.L line with Arthur S. Levine.
A Kasper skirt set was the first suit I ever purchased, in 1987, as a young journalist heading to a week-long conference at the prestigious Poynter Institute in Tampa. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the Kasper brand focused on making inexpensive clothes look exquisite and expensive. Thank goodness — because I did not have an eye for it, or more money to spend. I was a fairly recent college graduate. My favorite business clothes tended to be my sister’s hand-me-downs.
Following the conference, where I made friends with editors from elsewhere, I was offered multiple jobs at larger newspapers, and thus began my career climb. I credit the Kasper suit and the midi-length, 100% rayon faux-wrap dress I also had purchased for the trip. In LaMonaGirl Shop, you’ll find a vintage B.T. Express one that is the same design, only brown instead of the fuchsia pink and gray I loved in the mid-1980s.
Rayon dresses with shoulder pads and faux wrap waist were popular in the 1980s and early 1990s.
LAMONAGIRL.com 
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