 Hi, my name is Alexa Griffith-Winton. I am co-curator of A Dark, A Light, A Bright, The Designs of Dorothy Liebes, on view at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum through February 4th, 2024. We're very excited to share modern fashion secret weapon, Dorothy Liebes' Textiles in Fashion, a lecture by Lee Wichner, a Los Angeles-based fashion and textile historian, and the leading expert on Liebes' extensive but little-known work in the fashion industry. People don't connect me with the dress world, but from where I sit, art in textiles is art with a capital A, whether it is for dresses or home furnishings. This was a surprising late career lament from Dorothy Liebes, too often defined by her interior design work and sidelined from discussions of mid-20th century fashion. However, whether directly or indirectly, Liebes worked in fashion over her entire career with great zest for the art and commerce of it. She was a respected fashion authority in her time, maintaining high-profile consulting relationships with major American garment manufacturers and fiber suppliers. The first mention of Liebes in Women's Wear Daily is in 1938, reveals the duality of her role in the fabric design field. Shortly before the Golden Gate International Exposition opening, she was approvingly described as a rising talent whose, quote, reputation is associated with textiles she creates for home furnishings and who had the chic of a woman whose chief interest might be of women's fashions. One had this impression yesterday as she appeared in a black frock, a background for the magenta hat and huge handbag made from that looped weave of spun silk which is of Miss Liebes' own design, transported from home furnishings to millinery by Lily Dashay, end quote. Despite her occasional dismissiveness of the biz, Liebes was creatively engaged with fashion and keen to work in the clothing field. Her name first appeared in fashion periodicals between 1937 and 1938. Vogue and Harper's Bazaar mentioned her fabrics in the context of interior design for Tony clients. Women's Wear Daily did too, but as mentioned, speculated that Liebes' lavish goods would be tempting for designers who, with the slightest imagination, could envision them used in evening wraps, handbags, or hats. This multiplicity of the possible end uses is a hallmark of Liebes' practice and sealed her acceptance in the fashion clique. Style stalwarts took notice. In 1937, Liebes received an award from Lord and Taylor, and in 1938, Neiman Marcus gave one of its first annual fashion awards to her. In 1943, Lord and Taylor presented unique, hand-knit evening cardigans and evening clutches to match, incorporating sumptuous Liebes' fabrics revered by decorators in rich jewel tones such as cerise, yellow, and blue. Examples of these accessories and garments were featured in the Brooklyn Museum's 1942-43 retrospective of Liebes' career to that date. By 1941, Liebes was gaining recognition for her dress-weight fabrics for women's attire and accessories, incorporating a range of unusual materials such as brocaded ribbons, chenille, clusters of sequins, metal strips, glass beads, and artificial flowers. Although the outbreak of World War II temporarily limited her access to certain goods, Liebes forged ahead. Dramatic, turban-style hats and purses tinged with Asian influences, also characteristic of Liebes' taste, were offered by milliners such as Lily Dashay, Sally Victor, and John Fredericks, known as Mr. John, and retailed by Henry Bendles and Saks Fifth Avenue. During the war years in particular, Liebes' specialty fabrics enticed Hollywood designers. Although she was never credited on-screen, at least two productions used her exquisitely textured, glimmering textiles for set decor. The same qualities that made Liebes' materials exceptional on-screen made them desirable for film costumes and celebrity fashions. Adrienne Adolf Greenberg, known professionally as Gilbert Adrienne, was the first prominent designer to use Liebes' fabrics. Her unorthodox choices of materials attracted Adrienne, who left his position as head costume designer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941 to launch his own ready-to-wear and custom fashion lines. Liebes, who would become close friends with the designer and his wife, film star Janet Gainer, noted in her unpublished memoir, my work came to Adrienne's attention in a somewhat roundabout way via the Chinese Quarter in San Francisco. Having browsed through Chinese shops so much, I was quite familiar with materials that could be used in weaving. They were both colorful and inexpensive. Using Chinese ribbons, I had woven some cloth for handbags and wall panels. Adrienne saw the handbags and ordered the Chinese ribbon fabric which she designed into beautiful evening coats. Adrienne invited Liebes to design an opulent backdrop for his Beverly Hills Salon theatrical catwalk stage. They decided on a subtle yet dramatic melange of pale gray and cognac leather strips interlaced with metallic gold threads. A panel of this drapery is held in the collection of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. Here you see a detail of that panel, as well as a photograph of Janet Gainer, Loretta Young, and Claudette Colbert in Adrienne's salon. You can see the shimmer of the panel in the background. Liebes made certain her salon furnishings and custom fabrics for Adrienne introduced her to Hollywood's elite. A mission borne out by a Harper's Bazaar editorial depicting actress Lauren Bacall and model Slim Hawks, wife of film director Howard Hawks. Bacall wears a top quote, top coat, quote, woven of ribbon, silver thread, green and fuchsia pink wool, all in a wonderful elegant profusion, end quote. While Hawks is shown in a suit jacket of, quote, soft white wool, it might almost be heavy raw silk with shining gold woven into the plaid, end quote. Slide 11. Several Adrienne jackets in set with horizontal bands of Liebes twills and gleaming with metal strands popped up in the press at this time. Liebes herself was photographed wearing such a jacket and personal receipts and photographs confirm she wore Adrienne, such as this family snapshot in which she is wearing a dress of Egyptian inspiration decorated with the designer's signature touch, gingham. This is a photograph of a garment in the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum collection, and I was able to make a match between that and another photo of Dorothy Liebes in the 1940s wearing the identical design. More Hollywood Titans entranced by the glamorous Liebes look followed suit. In 1946, costume designer Travis Banton generated a buzz for Universal Pictures. And for Lorax, the new yarn Liebes had just been engaged to promote by creating a sensational emerald gold and black swing jacket for Lucille Ball's onscreen attire in William A. Sider's Love or Come Back. This was actually Banton's second use of Liebes' fabrics. Earlier in 1946, Merle Oberon was slated to wear a similar Banton coat for Vogue, but it mysteriously disappeared after the actress borrowed it the night before the photo shoot. An account executive at the J. Walter Thompson advertising company, which coordinated the Vogue deal, was obliged to report to Liebes, quote, the coat has never been seen since, and Miss Oberon refuses to talk about it. It sounds unbelievable, but it is true, end quote. Edith Head, the arbiter of Paramount Pictures costume design, also looked to Liebes' looms for two scales of gold rush gingham, a blonde cotton glistening with gold, copper, and silver metallic yarns. Liebes accepted lucrative printed textile styling opportunities expressly for apparel, such as the Dorothy Liebes Group of California Artist Design Textiles for Jules Forman in 1945, and color consulting and experimental development leadership roles, as she did for Janssen Knitting Mills, beginning in 1947. But her most transformative contribution to fashion was her work with Lurex. In 1946, the yarn division of the Dobeckman Company, manufacturers of cellophane, hired Liebes as a brand ambassador for this fashion forward plastic laminated aluminum thread. Her contractual objective was to explore the technical properties of Lurex, devise color palettes, and actively participate in publicity and marketing efforts. Liebes performed these tasks with fervor, and with Lurex's fashion angle, she was able to dovetail her Dobeckman duties with several of her non-competitive consulting engagements. Liebes immediately slipped this non-tarnishing, pliable, miracle yarn into her own works for fashion. In fact, the elusive Banton Oberon jacket was originally sent to Vogue to promote Lurex on Dobeckman's behalf. In her assessment of promotional goals, Liebes prioritized making the Lurex name a must for all fashion writers. Another mission was to convert the contravert, excuse me, I'll start over. Slide 17. In her assessment of promotional goals, Liebes prioritized making the Lurex name a must for all fashion writers. Another mission was to contravert the notion that metallic fashions were seasonal or formal, an effort that was roundly applauded by fashion purveyors such as Harper's Bazaar. Quote, This winter, you may go out in the rain in a raincoat spun from the threads of gold and metal. And when summer comes, you may swim in a gilded mayo. End quote. This prediction was a reference to the dandy's raincoat of white boucle shot with gold by Adele Simpson and a Rosemarie Reed strapless gold lame, swimsuit, both made with fabrics produced at Liebes' looms. The allure of washable, tarnish-proof metallics for outerwear and beachwear increased as sportswear companies, including Coal of California and Janssen, both of which Liebes worked for, marketed sparkling, high-style swimsuits and sweaters. Though her own designs for apparel and accessory fabrics, I'm sorry, excuse me, start over, 18. The allure of washable, tarnish-proof metallics for outerwear and beachwear increased as some sportswear companies, including Coal of California and Janssen, both of which Liebes worked for, marketed sparkling, high-style swimsuits and sweaters. Through her own designs for apparel and accessory fabrics, and those translated for mechanized production by Goodall fabrics in another Liebes' client, she was well on her way to making sparkle a year-round and global fascination. By the end of the 1940s and into the 1950s, Liebes' name was associated with a multitude of accessories. Footwear for Joyce, Apeasio and JJ Slater, handbags for Rosenfeld and Koblenz, printed handkerchiefs and oblong, fringed wool scarves spiked with glitter, designed for H.S. Herzman's Carol Stanley collection, just to name several. However, she was more often hailed as a color guru and a glimmer proselytizer. When Liebes joined Janssen in 1947, she was named the fabric fashion consultant and colorist, a position that allowed her to dabble in knitwear and print design while forecasting color trends with the capable backing of Janssen's sportwear designer Luella Ballerino, as well as Liebes' own expert staff. Here, Liebes was able to express some of her own fashion preferences, sharing tips such as swimsuit colors should bear a relationship to skin tones and not surroundings, and emphasizing harmonious mix-and-match colors in sun clothes so they could be combined across ensembles, intuitively knowing how women choreographed their wardrobes. She caused a sweater girl sensation with her glinting, tweedy knit day-to-evening tops, advertisements for striped t-shirts, printed satin swimwear, shorts and cashmere sweaters in Liebes' confectionary tones of lemon tint, seafoam, Persian green, Rio red, tangerine and aquatone emphasized her color authority. Darren Pierce, a Liebes employee keenly interested in fashion, also served as an envoy for her at Janssen's plant in Oregon. Designing under the name Mr. Darren, Pierce came into Liebes' orbit by walking into her Sutter Street studio and presenting stylized fashion sketches that specifically incorporated her fabrics. Mrs. Letters to Liebes from Janssen are intimate and ribald, filled with accounts of resistance to certain Liebes' look colors like Panama pink or wariness of her choices in knitting yards. I couldn't resist just showing you a few more of the incredible Mr. Darren sketches that are at FIT in their special collections because they're just too extraordinary not to show you. Pierce also had a hand in executing one of the most sensational fashion items of all, a festive hostess apron, quote, of bright hand-woven yarn and lurex in gold and iridescent colors and edged with gold metal tassels, end quote, as featured on the cover of House and Gardens February 1950 issue. While Pierce was credited by name in many sources, this apron and its accompanying black prey ski, or patio slacks, are often identified as the work of designer Claire Potter, another Liebes' inner circle friend. She may have collaborated with Pierce on these pieces for her own line. No doubt Liebes connected Pierce and Potter to create this whimsical accessory. Liebes first encountered Bonnie Cashin, whom she described as, quote, a pert little creature, an immensely talented girl, end quote. In Los Angeles, when Cashin was head costume designer for 20th Century Fox Film Corporation from 1942 to 48, apparently while on set, Cashin spied an exuberant Liebes fabric on a chair seat and insisted on using it for a coat. Combatable from the start, these self-assured experts in their intersecting fields shared aspirations to inject color into dull lives, make high quality design affordable, and be on the vanguard of functional but never boring simplicity. By the time Cashin relocated to New York in 1949 to pursue fashion, she and Liebes were close. Cashin's career was on the ascent when in 1951, she created shirts and aprons from Liebes' materials, one of which was a gold casement cloth. Cashin reasoned, why can't it screen you the same as a window? The pair overlapped into Beckman's The Thread of the Story is Lurex campaign juggernaut in 1954 and then again in 1956 for their most sensational collaboration, Skirting's Ink. Conceived as collector's items, these lengthy host of skirts, each accentuating a custom woven Liebes fabric, were designed by Cashin in 1956. The skirts featured in Vogue were admired for their svelteness, lush texture and shimmer. Cashin's 1958 skirts line featured a checkered mohair fabric frosted with Lurex which came in a jumble of greens and blues or all dazzling reds with pinks. This fuzzy material was overlapped in slim unrestricted wrap skirts or tapered mid-cap variations that appear as effortless as a blanket gather around the hips, minimally shaped at the waistline with a fringe cascading down the center front seam, a style maximizing the effects of Liebes' fabrics and worn by burlesque legend and Cashin client Gypsy Rose Lee. The pairing of this fabric, also used by Cashin for ponchos, with elegantly casual silhouettes, demonstrates the synergy between these women, both lifestyle centric designers ingeniously anticipating the direction of fashion. Liebes and Cashin traveled together frequently and shared a passion for art, marching up Madison Avenue every Saturday to visit museums and galleries together. The core of their aesthetic connection hinged on a heightened understanding of color and texture, both gravitated towards clear, saturated hues or more rarely, neutrally quiet ones, and used them adroitly. Their skirtings palette flickered subtly in black mingled with silver and white but pulsed with more offbeat, sour green, morning glory, poppy, mauve pink and strong yellow shades. Cashin's signature hues like Petunia Pink and Bright Orange were analogous to Liebes' favorite magenta and curry tones. Cashin's sketches for her resort 1964 line show her choice of a Liebes plaid for skirts, wild topper tunics and bags. Liebes' lustrous upholstery material, an array of flame colors with acidic chartreuse and rosy flamingo tones tempering the mix, was described as Cashin as non-regimental stripes and very certified checks. She also used this melanin and mimosa linen for what Cashin termed a Bernusse coat, described as a travel duster in press surrounding her early 1965 showings. Cashin used her friend's fabrics for personal wardrobe items as well. A bag hat whipped together from a piece of glittery fuchsia, violet and emerald striped twill, a sunset striped mini dress and futuristic bonnet ensemble, and a plush powder pink stole were all part of Cashin's stash. In turn, Liebes' wardrobe was studded with Cashin staples, many of which were made with studio woven fabrics but also with jasco power loomed woolens that were adored by Cashin and mostly designed by Liebes. Liebes connected with jasco fabrics in 1963 through Phillip Sills, Cashin's manufacturing partner. From the start of her contract, Liebes sent sampler blankets to demonstrate the feasibility of achieving different pattern effects on a single warp, thereby economizing production costs. Liebes was eager to do something quite outstanding for jasco and committed to delivering her brand of design excellence into the apparel fabrics field. Ever the cross promoter, Liebes suggested it would be worth jasco's while to use Orlon in their weaves. She advised that a 50-50 ratio incorporating this new acrylic fiber would merit valuable publicity by Dupont, Orlon's manufacturer and yet another of Liebes' knitwear and fashion industry clients. Her knowledge of Dupont's plan for synthetic fabric fashions at the 1964 World's Fair in New York interlocked with her artistic motivations concerning jasco, resulting in high fashion looks by Pauline Trichère, Andrew Woods, and Petula Jo Copeland, all made with wool blended with Dupont's laboratory fibers in weaves designed by Liebes. From the moment Liebes was retained by Dupont in 1955 for her expertise, she experimented in ways that came naturally to her, but fit in with the company's textile fiber department schools of broader promotion of man-made fibers. Her knit ideas for Orlon and Antron displays included dozens of matted samples made in her Midtown Manhattan workshop. On view at Dupont sales offices, these were shipped to conventions and trade shows where, if Liebes was attending, she personally arranged them in the most effective order. By this time, pages from glossy fashion reporting, which she proudly saved, document the plurality of connections Liebes had maintained for nearly 30 years, leading 7th Avenue designers crafting garments from myriad fabrics of her own design or otherwise, made with fibers she promoted in colors sprung from her fertile imagination manufactured by many companies she advised. Liebes touched nearly every aspect of fashion development in her time, maneuvering between corporate contracts and deftly meshing overlapping client objectives when possible. In terms of personal style, Liebes channeled her innate grasp of fashion principles not only into professional affairs, but also into crafting her own impeccable brand of chic. Descriptions of Liebes in the press comment on her taste in clothing, her live stature, and naturally her colorful attire. She wore pieces by leading American designers to satisfy her practical streak. She disliked Christian Dior, but appreciated a whimsy and the artisanship of haute couture from masters like Cristobal Balenciaga. Signatures of her personal Liebes look, a coiled coiffure crowned by a blonde pompadour, often with a custom roll hat by her friend Mr. John, perched atop, statement making coats, streamlined suits and simple shifts, and crisp Chinese style smocks for studio work, reverberated with her professional mantra of thoughtful color combinations spiced with texture and shine. Fittingly, she also favored gleaming metal jewelry, especially modernist pieces from Mexican silversmiths, and a spectacular pair of six inch wide gold cuff bracelets designed by her friend Helen Hughes Dulaney. Liebes proffered wardrobe advice, suggesting a formula of a light, a bright and a dark combination of hues for the most flattering look and for ease in coordinating ensembles. And I think it's perfectly embodied by this clear potter in her own wardrobe. She based most of her professional attire on black as a non-competing foil to her own vibrant fabrics, but sprinkled in playful prints, quote bright blouses and dress-up clothes in lime yellow, pink or chartreuse. As for wardrobe items made from her own fabrics, she is known to have woven glaring material over the course of a weekend for an evening gown, and once even repurposed emerald tinted upholstery from the tail end of a Davenport for a dinner jacket. With supreme fearlessness, Liebes frequently paired her fabrics with accessories in oddball colors like a purple and hot pink check with orange shoes to match the third color vibration emanating from the pattern. Punctuating her life's work with an appropriately fashionable exclamation point, Liebes donned a cash and cape ensemble to the opening of her career retrospective held in the spring of 1970 at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York. Of course, the cape's material was of her own design, a graphic double weave of outsized checks powerloomed in the United Kingdom by Otter and Byrne Limited. What became of Liebes' personal wardrobe is largely unknown, although the family has retained key pieces, and she did ask Bonnie Cashin to assist in dispersing her prized garments and travel keepsakes to family members and friends. Luckily, her archived papers and in particular her fascinating scrapbooks retain rich details about her appetite for style and document her essential role as a mid-century fashion alchemist, pushing Liebes' heady blend of color, luminosity, and tactility to the forefront. Thank you very much, and I wish to thank the Cooper Hewitt-Smithsonian Design Museum, Archives of American Art, Susan Brown, Alexa Griffith-Winton, and Charlotte von Hardenburg for their efforts. Thank you.