OrientalDaniel Hechter
Daniel Hechter is the label of a French designer born in 1938, founded in Paris in 1962 and counted among those that built ready-to-wear fashion. It extended its name to menswear, children's wear, accessories, home goods and perfumes, all operated under license. The German family group that had held the license bought the brand from its founder in 1998.
Daniel Hechter perfumes
OrientalOne of the fathers of ready-to-wear
Daniel Hechter was born in Paris in 1938 and opened his first workshop at eighteen. Brigitte Bardot wore one of his designs in Une parisienne, in 1957, giving him his first notoriety; he joined Pierre d'Alby in the late 1950s as the house's lead designer.
The wave that followed him, Emmanuelle Khanh, Christiane Bailly, Gérard Pipart, the Jacobsons of Dorothée Bis or Sonia Rykiel, turned ready-to-wear into something more than a by-product of couture. Hechter belongs to that generation, and his name remains one of its landmarks.
The label, from 1962 to affordable luxury
He founded his label in 1962 and presented a first women's collection, with a military-inspired style. Children's wear arrived a few years later, menswear in the late 1960s, and the collections expanded into sportswear and leisurewear.
The principle he championed was affordable luxury: designer cuts at mass-market prices. The name extended to accessories, home décor and perfumes, following the licensing model that then made the fortune of French labels.
A French brand run from Germany
In 1998, Miltenberger Otto Aulbach, a German family group that had held the Daniel Hechter license in Germany for years, bought the brand from its founder. The brand's headquarters has since been in Miltenberg, Bavaria.
The name is distributed through some forty licensees worldwide, with several hundred own-name stores and thousands of multi-brand points of sale. Perfumery is one of these licenses, not an activity conducted by the house itself.