The Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City is dedicated to the interplay of fashion and interior design. The exhibition ‘Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors’ presents more than sixty garments by forty women designers from the museum’s collection – including creations by Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Mary Quant and Anna Sui – alongside photographs and illustrations of various rooms and interiors, who inspired her work.
Garments, photographs and illustrations by artist and FIT professor Bil Donovan offer a glimpse into the living and working spaces of women designers. The exhibition presents couture salons and apartments developed by architects and interior designers, as well as rooms designed by women designers.
The earliest works on display in the exhibition date from the 18th century, including designs by Edwardian fashion designers such as Jeanne Paquin, the Callot sisters and Lucile. The latter was close friends with Elsie de Wolfe, considered one of the first modern interior designers, the museum said in a statement. The exhibition covers the period between 1890 and 1970 in the most detail. The far-reaching influence of interior design on women designers is illustrated, for example, with Coco Chanel’s “magnificent Parisian pied-à-terre” and Anna Sui’s “quirky New York apartment”, the each reflect the style and aesthetics of the designers.
In addition to fashion designers, part of the exhibition is also dedicated to designers who turned their backs on fashion and focused entirely on the world of interiors, such as Baroness de Rothschild, who was once known as Pauline Fairfax Potter, or Barbara Hulanicki and Carolyne Roehm.
“Women fashion designers have been eager to integrate interior design into their personal and professional lives,” said Patricia Mears, associate director of MFIT and curator of the exhibition. “Although there are many articles and books documenting this phenomenon, ‘Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors’ is the first exhibition to explore the connection between these two intertwined disciplines”. The Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology’s exhibition ‘Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors’ in New York City is open from November 30th to May 14th, 2023.