All Photos By Gail
Designer Annu Sui launched her own line in New York City in 1980, embracing a psychedelic, hippie-inspired look. She quickly gained a cult following and by the 1990s she was a recognized member of an emerging group of anti-glamour, proto-grunge designers.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Skort Set with Empire State Building Print By Anna Sui
All Photos By Gail
Like the side chair designed by Hector Guimard, seen just to the left of this cabinet in the bottom photo of this post, Louis-Desiré-Eugène Gaillard’s Display Cabinet (1900) incorporates bold, animated, plant-like forms in its decoration. Gaillard exhibited similar furniture at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris, also known as the Exposition Universalle, which helped popularize architecture and domestic objects with fluid lines and whiplash curves.
Cabinet Design Detail
This cabinet was part of a larger set of dining room furniture that would have been marketed to both middle and upper-middle class consumers. A key idea of design reform at the turn of the 19th century was that well-designed objects should not be reserved only for the wealthy.
Photographed in the Art Institute, Chicago.
All Photos By Gail
In 1970, Life magazine invited Rudi Gernreich (1922 – 1985) to envision what people would wear a decade in the future. He extended his prediction to the year 2000, illustrating men and women in matching ensembles with heads either shaved or wigged. Unlike other contemporaneous unisex styles, Gernreich’s designs did not use menswear as a baseline for women’s garments. “Women will wear pants and men will wear skits interchangeably,” he predicted. “The aesthetics of fashion are going to involve the body itself. We will train the body to grown beautifully rather than cover it to produce beauty.”
Continue reading Eye On Design: Unisex Jumpsuit By Rudi Gernreich
All Photos and Video By Gail
The scale model of Progressland refers to the General Electric pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair, whose themes were “Progress through Electric Power” and “The Wonders of Atomic Energy.”
Continue reading Eye on Design: Scale Model of Progressland for the 1964 New York World’s Fair