The fashion world brims with origin stories. There’s Coco Chanel popularizing the little black dress in the cocktail culture of the 1920s. There’s Mary Quant staking claim to the miniskirt in London’s Swinging Sixties.

Tucked deep within fashion lore was one of the most curious tales – kept alive for decades by vintage-clothing fans – that began with a few yards of white felt, scissors, a slide rule and an upcoming Christmas party in Hollywood in 1947. The felt was first laid out on the floor by an out-of-work singer who once appeared with the Marx Brothers on a tour of stateside bases during World War II.

Juli Lynne Charlot with a replica of the first poodle skirt. The fad seemed to celebrate the postwar optimism in the U.S. and was an important style statement for teen girls of the time: I’m not wearing what my mom wore. Copyright Juli Lynne Charlot/Courtesy of Lizzie Bramlett

She used her brother’s slide rule to calculate the dimensions. Then out came the scissors. “I couldn’t sew seams,” recalled Juli Lynne Charlot, “so I cut a circle with a hole in the middle, put it on a waistband and had my skirt.”

The simple design worn at the party – a snug waist, a swaying bell of fabric and fanciful appliqués – became one of the defining looks of the 1950s as it evolved into the “poodle skirt,” as much a touchstone of the decade in America as sock hops and chrome-gilded behemoths from Detroit automakers.

For Ms. Charlot, who died March 3 at her home in Tepoztlán, Mexico, at 101, her career pivoted suddenly from the fringes of show business to the center of a fashion fad that captured a moment. In a swirl of material, crinoline and whimsy, the skirts seemed to celebrate the postwar optimism in the United States and offer a canvas for the 1950s flood of consumer kitsch. The poodle skirt, especially for teen girls, also was a chance for an important style statement: I’m not wearing what my mom wore.

The poodle skirt didn’t begin with poodles. The Christmas party outfit cooked up by Ms. Charlot featured Christmas trees with shiny tidbits added as ornaments. The skirt was a hit, and a Beverly Hills boutique asked Ms. Charlot for three more. They quickly sold out.

After the holidays, the store needed to move beyond Christmas trees. The owners suggested Ms. Charlot take a crack at dogs, she recalled. Her first concept was dachshunds: a male dog and two females, one flirty and snooty. The three leashes were intertwined in a way that the male dog could reach only the snobby one. Next came the poodles of all types – fluffy, cute and always with an allusion of French chic.

The president of the popular Bullock’s department store in Los Angeles made an order – and the poodle skirts were given coveted window displays along Wilshire Boulevard. Ms. Charlot started a small garment operation to keep up with the orders, but she acknowledged she almost lost the business.

“I can’t do arithmetic,” she recalled to United Press in 1953. “Mother hocked her diamond ring three weeks in a row to help me meet the payroll.” Then orders came in from other flagship stores including Neiman Marcus in Dallas and Bergdorf Goodman in New York. By her mid-20s, Ms. Charlot was running a clothing line with dozens of employees and a bookkeeper. She learned seamstress skills on the job.

The poodle skirts were soon joined by a menagerie: images of galloping thoroughbreds, love-struck giraffes, pink elephants floating among champagne glasses and others. Other skirts were adorned with the Eiffel Tower or scenes from the resort island of Capri or skiers schussing down a slope. Blouses and hats and themed accessories soon followed. (She even designed a line of velveteen slacks called “ladder pants.”)

During the 1956 presidential election, Ms. Charlot offered a Democratic motif that included the party’s donkey kicking the Republican elephant; for the GOP, she gave a nod to Cold War tensions with slogans such as “atoms for peace.”

The poodle, however, reigned supreme in popular jargon. No matter what images or messages were used, the creation started by Ms. Charlot (and the many imitators that followed) was known generically as a poodle skirt.

Opera dreams

Shirley Ann Agin was born Oct. 26, 1922, in the Bronx, and adopted the first names Juli Lynne in her teens after the family moved to Southern California. She had dreams of becoming an opera soprano and felt Shirley Ann was not sufficiently diva-like.

Her father was an electrician; her mother was an embroiderer whose work included costumes for movies.

At Hollywood High School, the young Shirley had classmates including future stars Judy Garland and Lana Turner. Shirley began voice lessons at 13 and, after graduating from high school, had singing jobs with groups such as the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera.

She made her Broadway debut in 1945 in the Victor Herbert operetta “The Red Mill,” and was cast as a singer in the 1946 film comedy “Night in Paradise.”

Ms. Charlot said she was married four times, but the only relationship she publicly discussed was her marriage that began in 1940s to Philip Charlot, a former British naval officer who became a film editor and worked on movies including a version of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera “The Mikado” (1939). The marriage ended in divorce.

Complete details on survivors were not immediately available. Ms. Charlot had no children, said Lizzie Bramlett, a fashion writer who was in touch with Ms. Charlot in her later years and confirmed the death.

In the early 1980s, Ms. Charlot began producing interpretations of traditional Mexican wedding dresses at a factory in Mexico City. A major earthquake in 1985 destroyed the factory, and she abandoned the dress line, Bramlett said.

Among vintage-clothing collectors, a ’50s-era poodle skirt by Ms. Charlot can fetch hundreds of dollars. Some of rarer designs, such as the limited-edition political skirts, can reach well over $1,000.

Ms. Charlot always appeared to like that association of playfulness – her original motivation with the improvised outfit for the Christmas gathering.

“They are to wear at dull parties,” she told the Atlanta Journal in 1952. “If they don’t brighten up the party, the party is impossible.”