From November 30, 2022 to May 14, 2023, The Museum at FIT in New York takes a bold interdisciplinary approach with the exhibition Designing Women: FashionCreators and Their Interiors: FashionCreators and Their Interiors. It is the first exhibition to illuminate the intersection between the disciplines of "high fashion design" and "interior design" and to focus on the community of women designers. The exhibition features the permanent collection from The Museum at FIT, consisting of more than 60 garments and accessories by 40 women designers. Included are Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Ann Lowe, Mary Quant, CarolinaHerrera and Anna Sui. To understand why these women fashion designers create the fashions they do, explore their interior designs.

The Rise of Female Design Power

Elsa Schiaparelli, 21 Place Vendôme, 1935

Designs from the period 1890 to 1970 are the focus of attention in this exhibition. First on display are the creations of pioneering womenswear designers of the Edward VII era (between 1901 and 1910). Such as Jeanne Paquin and the Callot Sisters, as well as Lucile. Lucile's sister was the romantic novelist Elinor Glyn, who was an important promoter of the "It Girls" concept. The launch of "It Girls" inspired a large group of confident women with fashionable charisma who revolutionized pop culture. Among them was Elsie de Wolfe, the first female modern interior designer, who was close friends with Lucille and who often worked together and inspired each other. It is easy to see that there was a close relationship between modern high fashion design, interior design and fashion culture under the power of the female community, which together propelled the rise of female design power beginning in the late 19th century.

Mary Quant, London Heathrow Airport, 1968

The exhibition features photographs of the "Rose Room" at Lucile Couture House in 1916. The "Rose Room" was an intimate, boudoir-style space where clients could try on intimate clothing. Through the yellowing photos, one can see that the room was upholstered in layers of satin, which covered the entire wall, with a pile carpet on the floor and slim, light furniture, making the space soft and warm. Here, Lucille initiated the "Mannequin Parade", the precursor of the modern fashion show, and trained the first professional models. Lucile is famous for her tea-break dresses and evening gowns, with bold designs of slit skirts and low necklines, loose and comfortable overall shapes, draped fabrics like the satin cascading on the interior walls, and soft colors full of leisurely femininity, the atmosphere of the interior echoes the interior wear, constituting the leisurely lifestyle of fashionable noblewomen. This group of female designers set the trend for feminine designs and intimately decorated women's fashion houses, creating the prototype of a female fashion utopia.

Unique and radical women

Birdcage at Schiaparelli perfume boutique , Paris , 1937

In the late 19th century, more and more women founded fashion houses in Paris, London and New York, and the interiors of these houses became an important part of the fashion industry. The first women to enter the interior design field, known as the Great Lady Decorators, did not embrace the masculine modernist style, but rather embraced the Rococo style and Art Deco. Patricia Mears, associate director and curator of the exhibition, observes, "The women's approach is very different from many of the male-driven modernist movements, and what was happening under William Morris. They are designing for angles about luxury, comfort and privacy." And the fashion house was the gateway for women to connect with this society. As an important place for women to get out of the house and interact with other women, every design in the fashion house was filled with a unique transformation of the world they lived in as a result of the awakening of women's consciousness. French painter Henri Gervex's 1906 painting "CinqHeures chez Paquin" (Five Hours in the House of Paquin) depicts the throng of people in a couture house. The pink space is crowded with noblewomen in luxurious long dresses and exaggerated feathered hats, and the cream walls, soft green curtains and rococo décor create a sweet atmosphere.

Henri Gervex, painting "Five Hours at the Paquin House", 1906

Likewise, women designers have transformed the world, not only in the interior spaces shown to the public, but also in the intimate clothing spaces. In contrast to this painting showing the interiors, the exhibition showcases an evening dress design by Jenny Paquin. This work is in a pastel color scheme, with large areas of pink embellished with green vine pattern embroidery, using a delicate and gorgeous crinkled fabric, layered with a light and elegant sense of movement, and layering the garment with delicate lace, presenting a typical rococo look. It mirrored the interiors of the Maison Paquin, intensifying the feminine and feminine temperament. In this period, soft and highly decorative art styles such as the Rococo style were no longer just used as design styles, but were appropriated as symbols representing women's art and became tools for female designers to establish a female fashion utopia. Even more so, as in the case of the 1938 gold satin evening gown by Chapparelli on display in this exhibition, Chapparelli printed the blue butterfly, a symbol of perversion in surrealism, onto the gown, which is displayed next to a photograph of a giant birdcage in Chapparelli's perfume boutique, interpreting the imprisoned and distorted female identity with a strong metaphorical meaning. Going further than appropriating artistic style, Chaparelli used clothing as a weapon to intrusively etch her name into the history of surrealist design, declaring a female fashion utopia a triumph of rebellion against the traditional male perspective on design history.

Women's whims in the modern world

Designed by Bonnie Cashin, 1962

The marriage of fashion and interior decoration by women fashion designers continued after the Second World War. The exhibition features numerous examples, such as American sportswear designer Bonnie Cashin, who created her colorful, modern, modern high-rise homes, and whose depictions of modern women's fashion lives were fused into her clothing designs, creating a wide range of minimalist garments that fit the daily lives of modern, independent women; Sybil Connolly, who designed her Dublin salon, covered with hundreds of yards of beautifully pleated Irish linen that was used to create her couture garments. The final designer in the exhibition, Anna Su, is one of the few contemporary designers. The exhibition features Anna Sue in a black background floral dress, standing in the apartment she designed in Greenwich Village. Here, she customizes stained glass windows and Coromandel screens, blending East and West into the living space, just as she combines academic style with mash-up rock in her fashion designs, creating a contradictory aesthetic that is uniquely Anna Su's. The container for this intense tension is Anna Su's dreamy whimsy. In the Greenwich Village apartment, Anna Su has set up a secret room, accessible only from the back of the closet, in honor of her favorite fairy tale, The Lion, the Witch and the Magic Closet. "Everyone loves the quirkiness of my apartment, and it puts everyone in the mood to dress up. Sometimes I set dress codes because that space is an extension of my spiritual world." Anna Sui explores the power of fusion of different styles in the field of fashion and interior design to pay tribute to those vivid souls who simply have dreams and dare to face and express their diverse selves, women in the modern world also have the power to express themselves in more than just fashion and in multiple ways.

The Museum at FIT's exhibition of women's achievements in fashion and interior design, on the one hand, reintroduces women designers who have been hidden from the traditional male perspective of design history, and on the other hand, breaks the stereotype that women are mostly limited to the main role of design in the field of clothing. Through the interior design of fashion houses and residences, the women fashion designers further elaborate the unending words of their fashion, building a delicate and complete narrative from the material appearance of people to their spiritual feelings, fully revealing the love and talent of women fashion designers to create an elegant and beautiful lifestyle.

Article Source:艺术与设计

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