Three Women Who Defined a More Beautiful World
Any time is a good time to celebrate women! And today, inspired by International Women’s Day, I thought it was the right time to introduce, or reintroduce as it may be, three women who made significant contributions to the fields of design, architecture and art curation. How, might you ask, could I pick just three?
Well it wasn’t easy.
Narrowing down the long list of women who have shaped the field of design is an onerous task. These three form a triad of powerful women who forged a unique path forward creating professional and personal lives that were often at odds with the prevailing societal norms of the time. If you love design as much as I do, you can be certain that the work of these women has impacted you in some way, even if before now you didn’t know their names: Charlotte Perriand, Elsie de Wolfe and Gaetana “Gae” Aulent. Read on. Your world is going to get a bit more beautiful.
The Democratizer: Charlotte Perriand
As a very young child Charlotte Perriand could draw. And everyone around her knew it. At the urging of her school teachers and parents, Perriand attended the École de l’Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs from 1920 to 1925, where she honed her drawing skills while studying furniture design.
Perriand took every opportunity to sharpen her creativity, often enrolling in courses offered by large department stores who housed their own design workshops. She was encouraged to show her work as often as possible and that she did at various exhibitions throughout Paris. Perriand was known for bold designs. Their surfaces glistened of steel and nickel with minimal designs on the sleek upholstery. Her work was considered revolutionary and an homage to the machine age.
Pearls? Not for Charlotte Perriand. Fascinated with the mechanical age, she fashioned a necklace from chrome ball bearings, which she wore while working at Le Corbusier’s atelier in Paris. The necklace became a defining piece of her time collaborating with modernist architects and researching metal furniture.
Her collaboration with Le Corbusier didn’t come easily. In 1927, while studying furniture design in Paris, Perriand attempted to join Le Corbusier’s studio. By Perriand’s account, when she arrived at his atelier with her portfolio in hand seeking a position, he dismissively told her, “We don’t embroider cushions in my studio.”
There could possibly be another way to take that rebuke, but it seems pretty clear. Now, look at the picture of this woman on the book cover above. Do you really think the woman clothed only with her beautiful design of ball bearings was going to accept that answer?
Nope. Not at all. Perriand was not to be detoured. Confident in her talent, she invited Le Corbusier to the Salon d’Automne to view an exhibition of her design work. Recognizing her talent after seeing her Bar sous le toit design—Le Corbusier hired her on the spot. Which I guess was an apology of sorts. But likely more in the camp of self preservation. Because there was no denying the force she was to become.
One year after joining the atelier, Perriand had already produced three of Le Corbusier’s most iconic chair designs, the B301, B306, and the LC2 Grand Comfort. Noticed for adding humaneness to Le Corbusier’s rational work, her designs incorporated wood and cane over expensive chrome, which made them more affordable to the public. Her aim was to develop functional and appealing furniture for the masses. Which she did over the next decade while she worked with Le Corbusier.
Beyond her collaboration with Le Corbusier, Perriand continued to create with women in mind, a fairly novel idea at the time. She designed open-plan interiors to make sure women didn’t feel “trapped” in their homes. She truly believed that good design was for everyone, no matter their gender or economic status. To that end she sketched “La Maison au Bord de l’eau”, The House at the Water’s Edge in 1934, as an economical form of holiday lodging for the masses. She won accolades for her design, but the project wasn’t built until 2013 for Miami art week.
In 1940 Perriand was invited to travel to Japan to become an advisor for the Ministry for Trade and Industry. Two years later the ongoing war forced her to leave the country. On her return to Europe she was detained by a naval blockade and forced into exile in Vietnam. There she studied eastern design including weaving and woodwork, which had a huge impact on her later designs. Her modern ideas had a profound impact on the way we live today, from her use of natural materials and our open floor plans to her belief that good design is for everyone.
The Decorating Trailblazer: Elsie de Wolfe
Elsie de Wolfe’s parents told the story of a young Elsie coming home from school to find the drawing room redecorated. She took one look at the room and immediately made her opinions known by throwing herself on the floor and crying “it’s so ugly; it’s so ugly!”
We can assume that De Wolfe learned to express her design opinions with far more tact as she went on to become America’s First Decorator.
New York City, where so many quintessential American stories begin, is the location of her, “once upon time.” It was 1887 and De Wolfe had settled into what was then called a “Boston marriage“ with Elisabeth “Bessie” Marbury, a formidable figure in New York society. When she moved in, De Wolfe did what so many in new relationships attempt, she immediately restyled their shared home—sweeping out any Victorian clutter, opening spaces and introducing soft, warm colors and a bit of 18th-century French elegance.
Having enjoyed the success of this transformation, she quickly launched a business as a professional decorator, issuing business cards and networking with the power makers in New York society, a most uncommon move for a woman at the turn of the century.
In 1905, Marbury along with a few of New York City’s elite women, including Caroline Astor, Ann Harriman Vanderbilt, Anne Morgan and Payne Whitney, organized The Colony Club, the city’s first club exclusively for women. Recognizing De Wolfe’s talent, the group hired her to decorate the club. De Wolfe created what was considered a uniquely feminine style at the time, with an abundance of chintz (immediately making her name as the “chintz lady”) tiled floors, light draperies, pale walls and wicker chairs. She purposely designed the new space to feel feminine, a stark contrast to the heavy atmosphere found in men’s clubs.
The Colony Club was a showstopping project, and solidified De Wolfe as the preeminent designer to the New York glitterati. Her work preceded her by word of mouth and De Wolf was hired to decorate a number of private homes, on both the East Coast and in California, a model house (with Ogden Codman Jr.), opera boxes and a dormitory at Barnard College; she also lectured and published her most influential book, The House in Good Taste. By that time she had a suite of offices and a showroom on Fifth Avenue, with a staff of secretaries, bookkeepers, and assistants. And all of this she accomplished before women were allowed to vote, own property or open bank accounts in their own name.
De Wolfe was later introduced to Henry Clay Frick, one of the wealthiest industrialists of all time, which led to one of her most well known projects. Frick was finishing construction on an impressive limestone-clad hôtel particulier in the French Neoclassical mode on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1913. De Wolfe was assigned 14 rooms, ranging from Mrs. Frick’s boudoir—complete with eight panels painted by François Boucher for Madame de Pompadour—and Frick’s own solemn, walnut-clad bedroom to the daughter’s library, a pair of rooms for their son, various guest rooms and the housekeeper’s room.
De Wolfe continued making additional purchases for the house up until Frick’s death in 1919, and correspondence between her and Mrs. Frick continued into 1924. Fortunately, visitors to the Frick Collection today can still view De Wolfe’s work as Mrs. Frick’s boudoir, now the Boucher Room). It was moved to the museum, much as it was originally, with its remarkable furniture by Carlin and Riesener.
De Wolfe counted among her private and most celebrated clients Condé Nast, Paul-Louis Weiller, Cole Porter, and the Duchess of Windsor. She also wrote numerous articles, pamphlets and books, gave interviews and conducted lecture tours sharing her design theories and concepts.
*Henry Clay Frick went, as his fortunes developed, from collecting placid landscapes by Pittsburgh painters, through a foray among fashionable contemporary French and Dutch artists, to assembling a remarkable group of paintings and drawings by artists of the Barbizon School—Corot, Millet, Daubigny—and finally buying his first old-master oil in 1899. From then on, until his death in 1919, Frick acquired some 150 paintings that made his collection internationally famous: masterpieces by Bellini, Bronzino, Constable, Degas, Van Dyck, Fragonard, Gainsborough, Goya, El Greco, Hals, Holbein, Manet, Rembrandt, Renoir, Titian, Turner, Velázquez, Vermeer, Veronese, and Whistler, which now constitute the core of the Frick Collection.
The Ubiquitous Unsung Hero: Gae Aulenti
If you have visited Paris, you likely visited the d’Orsay Museum and fell in love with this train station turned museum.
Did you know that a woman, more specifically Gaetana “Gae” Aulenti is responsible for this renovation from train station to museum?
Aulenti’s work is literally everywhere, and sadly, it would not be surprising if you don't know her name. She was born 1927, in the small italian village of Palazzolo dello Stella, a time and place where women didn’t typically study for professional roles. In fact Aulenti’s parents forbade her from pursuing design. Fortunately, Aulenti defied her parents to study architecture at the Politecnico di Milano. When she graduated in 1954 she was one of only two women in her entire class.
From that moment in time, I’m convinced she never slept. And I’m imagining large quantities of strong Italian espresso fuelling her creativity. The breadth of work she produced in her lifetime is significant, and frankly amazing.
Here’s a quick overview: She’s the architect behind the 1980 renovation of the Beaux-Arts-style Gare d’Orsay railway station in Paris, transforming it into the Musée d‘Orsay. Of course, Parisians are well known for their strong opinions on architectural change. When the Musée d‘Orsay opened in 1986, it was quickly criticized as “too radical.” Aulenti, however, didn’t hesitate to point out the thousands of visitors who lined up each day to visit.
Aulenti continued to redesign museums around the world including the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou (1982-85); Palazzo Grassi in Venice (1985-86); and the new Asian Art Museum in San Francisco (1996-2003).
In her spare time between museum projects, Aulenti fit in a few additional historical preservations and reformations. Some of my favorite include the new entrance for Santa Maria Novella Train Station in Florence (1990); Palazzo Italia at EXPO in Seville (1992); the restoration of the Scuderie Papali at the Quirinale in Rome (1999); the renovation of Piazzale Cadorna in Milan (2000); the Museo and Dante stations on underground line 1, alongside the redesign of Piazza Cavour and Piazza Dante in Naples (1999-2002); the Catalan Museum of Art in Barcelona (1985-2004); the restoration of the Palavela in Turin for the Winter Olympic Games in 2006; the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Tokyo (2006); and the restoration of Palazzo Branciforte in Palermo (2011).
Oh, and we can’t forget her furniture designs and collaborations, many of which are still in production. She’s worked with the big names, including Artemide, Knoll International, Louis Vuitton, Martinelli Luce, Olivetti, Fontana Arte, Poltranova and Zanotta.
And of course we’d be remiss to talk about Gae Aulenti without the mention of her Pipistrello lamp. It’s a design editor’s darling pick and a whimsical addition to any space.