She secures employment as demonstrating model for a fashionable modiste. I was apprehended and sent back to school to continue my training as a modiste. Another operetta, "The Modiste", had less success in 1845. LeMaire tells them that they can borrow clothes from his modiste shop. After "Modiste" closed, Scheff toured it for years. A dressmaker is also called a mantua-maker (historically) or a modiste. The modiste refuses to believe Ella's story and she is discharged.