When we see a fashion collection we tend to forget about the actual spaces where a garment or accessory was created, underestimating the importance of the environment surrounding a designer. Yet, those spaces and the objects populating them, reflect the essence of the creative mind inhabiting them.
The years Gabrielle Chanel spent in the orphanage of the Cistercian abbey of Aubazine, inspired a monastic rigor in her fashion collections, but also in some of the furnishings and décor at 31 rue Cambon. Here Coco Chanel collected votive offerings, rock crystal crosses and a statue of a Virgin with child. The influence of her lover Boy Capel, guided instead her taste in furniture and prompted her to develop a passion for Coromandel lacquer panels decorated with jade, porcelain and mother-of-pearl inserts, while the objects of art depicting animals - horses, dromedaries and the guardian angel of Chanel, the lion - often turned into recurring motifs in the fashion and jewelry collections of the maison.
Elsewhere in Milan in the '80s, Cinzia Ruggeri's studio (View this photo) was instead populated by her own fashion designs like her iconic LED dress and by an impressive range of Italian design pieces - from Ettore Sottsass' Ultrafragola mirror to the Dalilatre chair by Gaetano Pesce and the Luminator lamp by Pietro Chiesa. These designs provided the perfect backdrop for Ruggeri's unique collections, but also represented portals into her other practice as Ruggeri also created interior design pieces.
Yet, while we are used to see pictures of fashion designers in their studios or ateliers, we do not often make the connections between clothes and spaces, but an exhibition opening at the end of the month at New York's The Museum at FIT (MFIT) - "Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors" (November 30, 2022 - May 14, 2023) - is set to explore this link from a female perspective.
Each fashion designer in this exhibition is represented by at least one garment or accessory from MFIT's permanent collection (there are over 60 garments and accessories by 40 female designers in the exhibition), juxtaposed to an interior image showing couture salons and apartments, self-decorated ateliers and homes, spaces expressing the passion of these female fashion creators, as well as a selection of large-scale drawings created exclusively for the exhibition by artist and FIT adjunct associate professor of illustration Bil Donovan.
Together, the featured objects and images provide insights into the magical interiors made for the most innovative and important fashion creators of the modern era.
The event starts with objects from the 18th century, but mainly focuses on the period between 1890 and 1970. In the 19th century, when more women founded important couture houses in Paris, London, and New York, interior decoration became a viable profession for women as well.
"Great lady decorators," as they were called in those years, embraced a contemporary revival of the 18th-century decorative arts, textiles, and fashions, and pioneering Edwardian couturiers - Jeanne Paquin, the Callot Sisters, and Lady Duff-Gordon, better known as Lucile - followed their suggestions for their intimately decorated couture houses.
Some of them also had their favourite interior designer: Lucile was a a close friend of Elsie de Wolfe, who is widely acknowledged to be the first modern interior decorator. The event includes pictures of the Rose Room of the Lucile Couture House in New York City compared to designs attributed to her, ranging from tea gowns and peignoirs and slips in dusty rose-pink silk chiffon and pale pink or beige silk.
One of the juxtapositions that works the best in this section is the one between the 1906 painting "Cinq Heures chez Paquin (Five Hours at Paquin)" by Henri Gervex, and a pink silk chiffon evening cape by Jeanne Paquin from 1897 that calls to mind some of the styles donned by the women in the painting.
The interwar years were a golden age for both fields: fashion and interior design introduced new trends and styles, from modern sleekness to bohemian eclecticism, while female designers regularly used interior decoration to enhance their brands and enrich their personal lives.
Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Juliette Mathieu-Lévy, owner of the millinery house Suzanne Talbot, were patrons of the era's greatest architects, craftspersons, and interior decorators including Jean-Michel Frank, Armand-Albert Rateau, Eileen Gray, and Jean Dunand.
While this section includes Schiaparelli's ivory silk satin evening coat with blue butterflies (1938), juxtaposed to a picture of the birdcage in her boutique in Paris in the late '30s, the most intriguing photograph in this section is the one showing the "salon de verre", combining modernism and exoticism, designed in 1922 by Paul Ruaud for Madame Mathieu-Levy, that featured furniture by Eileen Gray.
After World War II, the collaboration between fashion designers and leading interior decorators continued, particularly in New York City. Two Park Avenue apartments - one for Hattie Carnegie by the exclusive French firm Jansen and the other by American's legendary decorator Billy Baldwin for Mollie Parnis - exemplify this phenomenon. Later, in London during the swinging 1960s, Mary Quant commissioned Terence Conran to design her boutique called Bazaar.
The exhibition also includes the work of fashion designers who did their own decorating: from the colorful, mid-century modern, high-rise unit of American sportswear designer Bonnie Cashin; the Dublin salon of Sybil Connolly, sheathed in hundreds of yards of the same finely pleated Irish linen used to make her couture garments; and Anna Sui's whimsical, colourful and maximalist apartment in a Greenwich Village building with a library featuring a 1930s églomisé desk and custom bookshelves by Petrit Coma of P.C. Associates Group Inc. fitted with doors made from a set of cloisonné Chinese screens.
In some of these cases the fashion and interior design connection could be used as a metaphor as well: Cashin's timeless coats and accessories remind us indeed that it is possible to create garments that are always in fashion, just like interior design pieces (after all, we do not change the decor of our houses or our furniture every six months...).
But the stories told by the exhibitions are also exemplary tales that may inspire us to switch jobs and careers: there were indeed fashion designers who left the field to become decorators themselves, such as Barbara Hulanicki and Carolyne Roehm, but the most famous remains Pauline Fairfax Potter, later known as the Baroness de Rothschild (her French home, Château Mouton, was a masterpiece of modern interior decoration).
Interiors commissioned and created by female fashion designers, including Coco Chanel, continue to have profound influence, widespread appeal, and enduring relevance, but so do architectural styles in fashion, such as the 1968 emerald green and orange double-faced silk satin evening dress with matching cape by Pauline Trigère, innovator of cut and construction, included in the event.
While, as Patricia Mears, MFIT deputy director and curator of the exhibition, states in a press release there have been many articles and books documenting the fashion/interior design connection, but "Designing Women" is the first exhibition to explore this link.
Hopefully, more immersive and comprehensive exhibitions will follow in future as there are more decades to examine, more comparisons between inspirations, colours and shapes to make and more architectural silhouettes to analyse and get inspired by.
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