Marie-Louise Carven, a driving force in taking France’s postwar fashion international, died on Monday aged 105.

Carven, who opened her fashion house in the French capital in 1945, conducted a five-decade long career founded on the idea that style should belong to all, not just to tall, skinny models.

Born Carmen de Tommaso on August 31, 1909 in central western France, she renamed herself Marie-Louise Carven and designed clothes with a fresh and carefree style that were an immediate hit with actresses like Leslie Caron and Martine Carol and young girls around the world.

Ignoring her mother’s view that at 1.55 metres tall she would “never be elegant”, she dropped early plans to become an architect or interior designer and set about creating clothes that flattered women like herself.

In 1945, at the age of 34, she opened her own haute couture fashion house on the Champs-Elysees, and called it Carven. The Carven name was one she also chose for herself, reinventing her image for life in Paris.

“In the broiling Indian summers of those days Carven began to create the most adorable summer frocks. Paris began to talk, smart women everywhere went to Carven and emerged smarter still,” Women’s Illustrated said later.

She only gave up designing in 1993, in her 84th year, to concentrate on a passion for old furniture and antiques.

In 2009, the French government paid tribute to her as “one of the most eminent creative forces in French and international fashion”.

“Couture brought me happiness, they were the best years of my life,” Carven recalled with a smile at a celebration the same year ahead of her 100th birthday.