Two of the most influential fashion designers of the time were Jacques Doucet and Mariano Fortuny. Doucet excelled in layering pastel colors and his elaborate gossamer dresses suggested the Impressionist shimmers of reflected light. His distinguished customers never lost a taste for his fluid lines and flimsy, diaphanous materials. While obeying imperatives that left little to the imagination of the couturier, Doucet was nonetheless a designer of immense taste and discrimination, a role many have tried since, but rarely with Doucet's level of success.