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Modern Fashion's Secret Weapon: Dorothy Liebes's Textiles for Fashion, July 12, 2023 3:00PM

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Item details

Date

July 12, 2023 3:00PM

Name

Modern Fashion's Secret Weapon: Dorothy Liebes's Textiles for Fashion

Description

Join modern textile and fashion historian Leigh Wishner for this illustrated talk on the extensive and extraordinary contributions Dorothy Liebes made to midcentury fashion design. Wishner will provide an overview of Liebes’s work and pervasive influence on fashion, how her research on Liebes contributes to the history of American fashion design, and explore some ways in which Liebes’s influence is still felt in the fashion industry today. 

Though her work for fashion is largely unknown, Liebes created hand woven and powerloomed textiles for fashion designers and sportswear manufacturers from the 1930s through the 1960s. Designers who used her fabrics included her close friend Bonnie Cashin, Hollywood designer Adrian, Pauline Trigère, and Clare Potter. Liebes was known for her personal style, and her own looks reflected what many American women wanted to wear:  modern, high quality, and practical clothes that privileged function and elegance over fashion trends.  With her broad knowledge of materials, manufacturing, and marketing, Liebes understood the textures and colors that designers wanted for their customers. Liebes’s textiles were also put to use by Hollywood costume designers, including Edith Head and Travis Banton, who created dramatic garments made from handwoven Liebes fabrics for the movies.  

About the Program 

  • Program Length: 75 minutes 

  • Interactivity Level: Low to medium 

  • Intended Audience: People curious about design, fashion history, interior design, costume design, midcentury modernism 

Speaker 

Leigh Wishner is a modern textile and fashion historian. She has worked in the fashion museum field for over twenty years, holding positions at the FIDM Museum at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and at Cora Ginsburg LLC. She received her B.A. in art history and archaeology from Barnard College, and her M.A. in decorative arts and material culture from Bard Graduate Center. Wishner has an unabashed passion for 20th-century textiles, fashions, and interiors, lecturing extensively on these intertwined subjects. Most recently, she contributed to “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” (2023, Yale University Press/Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum), the first major publication devoted to this pioneering, 20th-century American weaver. 

Moderator 

Alexa Griffith Winton is manager of content and interpretation at Cooper Hewitt, and is co-curator of A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes with Susan Brown, Acting Head of Textiles at Cooper Hewitt. 

 

ACCESSIBILITY 

  • Location: This program will take place in person in the Lecture Room at Cooper Hewitt (2 East 91st Street, New York, NY). The Lecture Room is on the ground floor of the museum and fully wheelchair accessible. There is an accessible restroom on the same floor. Theater-style seating will be available. Read more about accessibility at Cooper Hewitt. 

  • What to Expect: This program will include an illustrated presentation with slides by the speaker followed by a moderated conversation and an audience Q&A. The program will be recorded and available on Cooper Hewitt’s YouTube channel. 

  • Accommodations: The program includes live CART captioning. 

  • For general questions, please email us at CHEducation@si.edu. You may submit a question in advance for our speakers. If we can provide additional accessibility services or accommodations to support your participation in this program, email us or let us know when registering. Please make your accommodation request as far in advance as possible—preferably at least one week before the program date when possible. 

Seats

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