Exhibition: Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors — Closes

November 30–May 14, 2023
Fashion and Textile History Gallery

Modern female fashion designers ardently incorporated interior decoration into their professional and personal lives. This phenomenon became increasingly evident beginning in the late nineteenth century, as more women founded important couture houses in Paris, London and New York. At the same time, the field of interior decoration became a viable profession, thanks in large part to innovative ladies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors is the first exhibition to explore the connection between these disciplines. Approximately 70 garments from The Museum at FIT’s permanent collection will be on view alongside photographic images of the most compelling interiors created for leading female fashion designers from the 1890s to the 1970s. Featured creators include Jeanne Paquin, Lucile, Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet, Pauline Potter (later Baroness Pauline de Rothschild), and many others.

Presented chronologically, the selection of objects and images will include a diverse range of spaces, from luxe couture salons and modest ateliers to private homes. Together the fashions and photographs will address how and why interior decoration became such an integral part of fashion’s leading designing women.

This exhibition is free and open to the public.