With an emphasis on large shoulders and asymmetrical elements, this suit reflects the 1980s taste for so-called ‘power dressing’. This design typifies the day-time wardrobes of Helene Hayes’s wealthy and socially prominent clients such as Mrs Rupert Murdoch, Mrs Henry Ford, Mrs Gordon Getty, Mme Claude Picasso and Mme Juliette May Ray. Many of Hayes’s clients were expatriates or travelled frequently to Paris from abroad. Helene Hayes would fit clients at the Paris atelier, or from her hotel suite in New York or Los Angeles. She would visit her best clients at their homes. Garments such as this suit were sewn by seamstresses at the back of the Paris shop.

London-born Helene Hayes was brought up in New South Wales, Australia. She moved to Paris in the early 1960s to study sculpture. She began working in the fashion business in 1963 as a manager in the house of Jean Louis Scherrer. From the early 1980s, Helene Hayes operated her Parisian couture boutique first at 2 rue de Tournon and then at 42 Avenue Montaigne. Her son, Alexander Hayes, recollected that the family lived above the shop at 2 rue de Tournon.