MAYER, TERRY-FASHION ICON, BELLOLOGIST (c) by Polly Guerin

Of all the women who have reinvented themselves Terry Mayer, a woman who wore many hats during her storied career, became a fashion authority, a publicist and product innovator. Terry’s meteoric rise to the top echelon of women determined to succeed was accomplished by the sheer magnitude of her prolific outpouring. As a mentor to many women in the fashion industry she helped to elevate other women to achieve their goals and all the time she was the ultimate fashion icon, beautiful, intelligent and a native New Yorker. Terry Mayer quietly and with dignity leaves a vast legacy of original ‘firsts’ that count her among the legends of New York women, the ‘brains’ behind America’s most glamorous period in fashion.
THE LADDER TO SUCCESS Well suited to the fashion culture of New York City when Terry graduated from college she pursued her dream and entered the business world. After landing a job in the publicity/marketing department of Macy’s Department Store she started on a course that would define her life and her career. Vin Draddy, president of David Crystal Co., makers of fine women’s dresses on New York’s Seventh Avenue recognized her talent and appointed Terry the firm’s publicist. She spearheaded the growth of the company’s fashion recognition and worked on the exciting new colorful line of IZOD golf shirts. Terry far exceeded her ambition and decided to break out on her own.
BECOMING TERRY MAYER PUBLICITY Competition was rampant in the fashion publicity but undaunted Terry created many ‘firsts,’ like the Denim Council. At a time when denim was considered utilitarian she promoted denim as fashionable and chic through newsletters and fashion shows. It was at this time that Terry began her awesome collection of ‘Drum Beaters,’ amusing and animated figures and characters that represented the drum beating of publicity. A unique collection it really should be housed in a museum. Terry aligned herself with the international sectors of fashion and was cited for her work on the Inter-American Council promoting Latin American fashion. She also spearheaded the campaign on the Mayor’s Committee to celebrate New York City. In time she participated in many fashion industry organizations and was a founder of The Fashion News Workshop.
A REGULAR AT ‘21’ Terry had great social instinct and knew that being seen and socializing with clients and the fashion cognoscenti was an essential to a successful publicity career. She became a regular patron of ‘21’ the famous restaurant on W. 55 Street and her name was assigned to her regular table, #53. One could find her meeting a client for a drink to gossip and catch up from time to time. Terry once remarked, “I had been going to ‘21’ since the 60s and enjoyed being made a fuss over. That’s what it’s all about. Maybe that’s what life is about.” When a birthday or a career achievement was celebrated at ‘21’ Polly, her chief copywriter at Amos Parrish where Terry was vice president of Fashion, was often a guest. “I never had a meal I did not enjoy,” Polly exclaimed, “For anyone who was in Terry’s orbit she celebrated life and made it a more exciting.” Terry never lacked for admirers and especially when male diners came forward to greet her. The fashion icons of the day included celebrity designers. Even Bill Blass made his way to her table.
BECOMING A BELLOLOGIST If indeed ideas are planted in the very young then Terry’s subconscious mind held a secret. As Terry recalls when she was a little girl, her mother put bells on her shoes, “so I would not get lost around the house." And so it was that after a 30-year career in publicity and public relations and counting her service as president of the Publicity Club of New York, Terry embarked on yet another career designing bell jewelry. As the commentator of a Denim Council fashion show she had blue-jeaned models wear jingling bells around their waists. That sparked an idea and led Terry to take a course in jewelry design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Eventually her own bells, which she designed as jewelry in the shape of fruits, animals, seashells and sailboats with a tinkling bell found their way into stores like Tiffany & Company and as the bull and bear in the financial district.
THE BELL ASSOCIATION With her enthusiasm and success as a jewelry designer it was inevitable that Terry’s path would lead further into the world of bell collecting. As president of the New York chapter of the American Bell Association International, Terry held regular meetings with sort of “show and tell” sessions among avid bell collectors. The collections discussed included all kinds of bells that have maintained a lofty place in American history, in church towers, pilot houses, locomotives and schoolhouses. Today many museums maintain bell collections including world famous historical collections as well as American glass bells, walking sticks, sleigh bells, bicycle bells and even mother-of-pearl teething rings. Most wonderful and privileged were the New York chapter meetings that were held in the music department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where historic bells were the main topic on view and discussion. There were ancient bells that lonely shepherds once used to communicate from mountain to mountain as they tended their flocks of sheep and majestic stone temple bells of the Orient that when struck released a different sound message. These meetings were organized through the largesse of Joe Petnick III who passed these treasures among the bell enthusiasts and regaled us with historic stories and legends of the past.
ON A PERSONAL LEVEL TERRY MAYER WAS GENEROUS; SHE WAS KIND AND A CHAMPION OF WOMEN PURSING CAREERS IN THE FASHION, ADVERTISING AND PUBLICITY ARENAS. SMART, ATTRACTIVE AND INNOVATIVE TERRY MAYER WAS ONE OF THE OUTSTANDING WOMEN WHO SUCCEEDED IN THE COMPETITIVE BUSINESS WORLD. WHEN MOST WOMEN WOULD HAVE RETIRED TERRY MAYER REINVENTED HERSELF FROM FASHION PUBLICITY ICON TO JEWELRY DESIGNER. SHE CREATED NEW WORDS, ‘BELLOLOGIST,’ FOR EXAMPLE, TO IDENTIFY WITH HER ROLE AS JEWELRY DESIGNER AND BELL ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT.
THANK YOU TERRY MAYER FOR BEING ONE OF THE MOST ADMIRED AND VENERATED WOMAN OF THE CENTURY.

CAPITMAN, BARBARA BAER, CHAMPION OF ART DECO (c) By Polly Guerin

When it comes to Art Deco preservation and the woman who founded numerous Art Deco chapters around the country I recognize and honor the memory of an amazing Art Deco woman Barbara Baer Capitman. An intrepid little woman with a colossal personality, Capitman was a pioneer and spearheaded the struggle to save Miami’s colorful Art Deco district. Identifying the architectural value of the 1930s buildings in South Miami Beach she literally put her body on the line to protect deteriorating Art Deco buildings marked for demolition. It is amazing how one person with limited resources yet possessing a powerful goal could change the course of a city’s prosperity so completely and wonderfully. It had a ripple effect through its people and tourism, and gave rise to a greater appreciation of Art Deco style nationwide. Barbara Baer Capitman was a woman determined to succeed and her reputation as the indomitable champion of Art Deco treasures of Miami Beach is revered in the architectural history of our country.
BECOMING A PRESERVATIONIST Leave it to a woman to rally behind a cause and put her whole heart and soul into its realization. After the death of her husband William, at 53 Barbara Capitman became a preservationist she admitted, “To fill the void and as a means of making new friends.” Petite and feisty she attributed her quavery voice, which her detractors frequently mimicked, to the shock of his death. Unfazed by any criticism Barbara pressed on as a preservationist, observing as she did that the 1930s Art Deco buildings in South Beach could be a historic district of 20 century architecture. Although Art Deco is somewhat more whimsical in Miami, the style is exemplified by the Chrysler Building and Radio City Music Hall in New York City, which are the best examples of Art Deco.
THE MIAMI DESIGN PRESERVATION LEAGUE It was inevitable that such a monumental task of saving the Art Deco treasures in South Miami Beach, which Capitman took up unrelentingly, was an insurmountable task alone. Although she began her campaign to create 20th century historic district in Miami Beach in 1975, she no doubt realized that she would need support to back up her preservation goals and in 1976 through Barbara’s efforts and her son John Capitman, The Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL) was formed. The initial impetus for forming The Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL) was to find a project to honor the United States’ bicentennial and in 1977 MDPL was duly incorporated by the State of Florida.
THE FIRST ART DECO WEEK As an incentive to showcase the Art Deco Section of Miami Beach, and hoping to attract locals, tourists and Art Deco aficionados to the area, the first Art Deco Week was held in October 13-19, 1978.Within four years, despite opposition by the Miami Beach city manager and the Chamber of Commerce, Barbara and her Design Preservation League won listings of the mile-square district on the National Register of Historic Places, providing federal tax incentives for restoration. The Miami Beach Historic District popularly referred to as the “Art Deco District” is the only district with 20th century architecture in the register. Art Deco Week continues to be a great attraction and draws visitors worldwide. Today the festival is in its 28th year and attracts upwards of 400,000 over the three-day festival.
MIAMI BEACH ART DECO REVIVAL A born visionary, in the early 1980s it was Capitman’s idea to bring the fashion industry and travel writers to South Miami to see the Art Deco architecture first hand. While it was winter in New York South Beach provided a summer venue for fashion industry professionals and photographers. As an incentive she offered the photographers and press inexpensive rooms in the Art Deco District. Miami Beach became a sensation and advertisements and travel stories worldwide garnered millions of dollars in free advertising as did its fame increase with the hit television series “Miami Vice,” which gave the district more free publicity on a major television network. Today celebrities, the fashion cognoscenti, the curious tourist come to call South Beach their own playground of Art Deco delights. World famous artist and one of the pioneering Art Deco collectors Andy Warhol was among the celebs who visited South Beach and the news generated caused a sensation that brought art-world notoriety to the district.
CHAMPIONING ART DECO No better spokesperson ever existed for Art Deco style than Barbara Baer Capitman. In 1981, at her own expense, she went on a three month nationwide tour driving her small car across the country to tell people about Miami Beach’s historic district and to promote Art Deco style. Her feisty personality and determination to popularize Art Deco was singular achievement which led to preserving nationwide the “decorative arts” style of architecture popular between the two world wars. She personified the genre and instigated the founding of Art Deco Societies around the country including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston and New York to name a few. Modeled after these societies many others sprung up all over the world, but Miami Beach became the Mecca for Art Deco enthusiasts. Capitman also became the founder of the World Congress on Art Deco, a major conference that is held in a different country every two years. The 11th World Congress on Art Deco met August 14 to August 2o in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, marking the first ever meeting in Latin America. World Congress’ were previously held in New York, Australia, England, New Zealand, Tulsa and South Africa.
THE INDOMITABLE CAPITMAN After Capitman took her celebrated trip around the nation in search of Art Deco treasures the idea for a book inspired her to write Deco Delights, her definitive book on the efforts to save and protect Miami Beach’s famed Art Deco district published in 1988. At the time of her death Capitman was working on a book, “Rediscovering Art Deco U.S.A.,” her final book, but passed away in the midst of the project, on March 29, 1990. The book was completed by co-authors Michael K. Kinerk (an original member of the MDPL) and Dennis W. Wilhelm, who spearhead the Miami Art Deco Society today. The publishing world was her métier for she had worked all her life in the design and publishing, serving as editor of numerous magazines. At the time of her death, she was president of the International Coalition of Art Deco Societies (ICADS), president of Art Deco Society of Miami and counted the Miami Design Preservation League and board member of the metro Dade County Historic Preservation Board among her liaisons.
WHILE MOST OF THE INVESTORS AND BUILDERS WHO RESTORED SOUTH MIAMI’S ART DECO DISTRICT MADE HUGE FORTUNES BARBARA BAER CAPITMAN GARNERED NO FINANCIAL REWARD FOR HER PRESERVATION EFFORTS. FOR CAPITMAN SAVING MIAMI’S COLORFUL ART DECO TREASURES WAS A LABOR OF LOVE. HER SOLE COMMITMENT TO RESCUING ART DECO FROM OBLIVION IN SOUCH BEACH, AND ESTABLISHING SOCIETIES AROUND THE COUNTRY IS A LASTING LEGACY AND A FITTING PROJECT THAT HONORED AMERICA’S ART DECO HERITAGE.

BRANDT MARIANNE, BAUHAUS METALIST (c) By Polly Guerin

Not to be confused with the Edgar Brandt, modernist, Marianne Brandt, born in Chemnitz in 1893 as Marianne Liebe, became a Bauhaus metalist whose name and design innovations rank among those of Marcel Breuer, Mies van Der Rohe and Walter Gropius. She started out as a painter, studying from 1911 to 1918 at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Weimar, and did a brief stint as a freelance painter before marrying the Norwegian painter Erick Brandt in 1919. The couple lived in Norway and the South of France until 1922. In 1923 Marianne Brandt and her husband moved to Weimar but Erik Brandt returned alone to Norway the same year although the Brandt’s did not divorce until 1935. Abandoning painting Marianne Brandt destroyed most of her paintings and drawings and at the age of 32, in 1924 she joined the Weimar Bauhaus. She was a woman determined to succeed by breaking through barriers that barred women Marianne Brandt became the first woman to head of the metal workshop at the Weimer Bauhaus in 1928. Brandt’s designs for household objects such as lamps, ashtrays and teapots are considered the harbinger of modern industrial design.

THE BAUHAUS PHILOSOPHY

The famous glass and steel educational complex were Marianne Brandt studied was brilliantly Bauhaus: Form follows function. It became the icon of Modernism, of the International Style. The workshops were the core curriculum, even for master artists and out of them came daily objects at affordable prices. She became a student of Hungarian modernist theorist and designer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy who realized what a talented designer Marianne Brandt was and nurtured her gifts and admitted her to the metalworking workshop. Brandt was one of the few women to have excelled in the man’s world of design. Until her arrival at the Bauhaus, women students had been forced to study ceramics or weaving but thanks to her mentor, Moholy-Nagy, she was the first woman to be admitted into the male bastion of the metal workshops.

QUICK RECOGNITION OF SKILLS

In the metal workshop Marianne quickly rose to the position of workshop assistant. The years 1924-1929 saw Marianne Brandt design numerous utilitarian objects and lamps. She eventually succeeded Moholy as the workshop’s director in 1928 and in the post she negotiated some of the most important Bauhaus contracts for collaborations with industry, launching some of her lamp deigns on a mass-produced basis, mainly for the lighting firm of Korting & Mathiesen in Leipzig and also Schwintzer & Graff in Berlin.

THE TALE OF THE TEAPOT

Perhaps the most stunning of her accomplishments of hand wrought designs is an exceptionally rare silver and ebony tea service which exemplifies the best of the German Bauhaus’s modernist aesthetics and functional ideals. The tea service pictured here rejects ornamentation for simple geometric forms like cylinders, spheres and hemispheres. It also reveals the famed school’s emphasis on function: the push-on lid of the teapot, placed away from the spout, does not drip, and the wood knobs provide heat-resistant grips. The teapot was one of several prototypes designed and made by Brandt, when she was a student, and later a teacher in the Bauhaus metal workshop.

THE TEAPOT AND ITS CREATOR

Brandt made the original prototype in 1924, her first year in the metal workshop, which was then run by the charismatic Hungarian constructionist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. The design was inspired by Moholy-Nagy’s constructivist style. However, Brandt strove to ensure that the teapot’s form was directly related to its function. Brandt created an abstract sculpture, which at the same time, is a teapot. According to Richard A. Born, senior curator, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, “The tea service, designed by Marianne Brandt and created by hand in the school’s workshops , consists of tea infuser (pot), creamer, sugar bowl and tray in sterling silver and ebony. The service is firmly set in the tradition of costly craft-based metalworking and was likely intended for a well-heeled clientele receptive to progressive interior design—a point that underscores the limitations of the Bauhaus’s social agenda of mass-produced and affordable domestic items of good design.”

NEW HORIZONS

After leaving the Bauhaus for Berlin in 1929, Brandt was briefly employed by Walter Gropius’ architecture practice in Berlin. She designed mass-produced and modular furniture for the interiors of the public housing project in Karlsruhe-Dammerstock. She subsequently became head of metal design at the Ruppel firm in Gotha, where she remained until losing her job in the midst of the ongoing financial depression in 1932. During the l930s, when Gropius and Moholy and other Bauhauslers fled Nazi Germany, she returned to her hometown of Chemnitz to look after her family.
DERIDED AS A ‘DECADENT’ BAUHAUSLER, MARIANNE BRANDT WAS UNEMPLOYABLE UNDER BOTH THE NAZIS AND THE EAST GERMAN COMMUNISTS AFTER WORLD WAR II. SHE REMAINED ISOLATED ON THE ICY SIDE OF THE IRON CURTAIN UNTIL HER DEATH IN 1983. SOME OF HER BAUHAUS DESIGNS HAVE EVEN GONE INTO PRODUCTION, BUT SADLY NOT THE TEAPOT SERVICE. MARIANNE BRANDT WAS OFTEN OVERLOOKED BUT TODAY SHE IS RECEIVING HER DUE RECOGNITION AS A MAJOR BAUHAUSLER AND CELEBRATED ALONG WITH WALTER GROPIUS, MARCEL BREUER, MIES VAN DER ROHE. SHE WAS A MODERN WOMAN AHEAD OF HER TIME AND BROKE THROUGH THE MALE BASTIAN IN METAL CRAFSMANSHIP IN 1924.

STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER, Anti-Slavery Novelist (c) By Polly Guerin

Never underestimate the power of the mighty pen. Harriet Beecher Stowe the author of the anti-slavery novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” it is said helped prompt the start of the American Civil War. Little did she know that her destiny would be forged in raising awareness of the plight of African-American salves during the 19th century. Harriet Elizabeth “Hattie Beecher was born 200 years ago on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut the sixth of 11 children into a family of powerful and very demanding individuals. The foundation of family values, social service and activism was at the gore of her upbringing. She was a woman progressive in her values and ideals and was determined to succeed. In an era when most women were not formally educated she and her sisters were educated and devoutly Christian. All of her brothers like their father, Lyman Beecher, a fiery, Evangelical Calvinist, became ministers and her sisters were both pioneers in advancing women’s education and voting rights. Harriet choose to do it through the powerful written words of activism.
AN AUTHOR EMERGES In 1832 Harriet’s family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, when her father was made the president of the Lane Theological Seminary. It was at this time that Harriet made her first attempts at writing fiction and her writing career was well underway with the publication of two novels before her marriage in 1836 to theology professor Calvin Stowe. The couple opposed slavery and was active in the abolitionist movement and housed runaway slaves from the south and assisted the Underground Railroad. During this time they had seven children but it was the death of her toddler child that inspired Stowe to write about slavery. With a mother’s heart torn by the loss of her child she sympathized with the slave mothers who were forced to give up their children to be sold. She also had the opportunity to visit the South and observed the operation of the slave system there. The riveting details of this trip further fueled her pen.
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN Harriet’s husband Calvin Stowe was called to a position at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine where Harriet set about writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The action of the book traces the passage of the slave Uncle Tom through the hands of three owners, each meant to represent a type of Southern figure, the last being the wicked Simon Legree, who causes the death of Uncle Tom. The successful dash for freedom taken by Georg and Eliza is the high point of the book. The story was first conceived as installments and appeared in serial form from 1851 to 1852 in the National Era, a Washington, D.C. anti-slavery newspaper. Harriet wrote more than 40 installments but the book was published in 1852 in a two-volume edition by the house of John P. Jewett. It sold three hundred thousand copies in its first year and a best seller worldwide.
WILD CRITICISM ERUPTED In the North there were universal charges that the world of the slave had been misrepresented and in the South retaliation hit the newspapers in a flood of criticism. Stowe answered her critics in 1853 with “A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” to document the facts in the novel. Harriet also responded to her success by traveling and lecturing widely, receiving her just due and praise in England and in Europe. She never lacked a devoted and enthusiastic American audience and in 1862 when she was introduced to President Abraham Lincoln, he is said to have exclaimed, “So this is the little lady who started our big war!”
Harriet Beecher Stowe published more than 30 books in her lifetime but she is best known for a crusading sense of social and political responsibility. Uncle Tom’s Cabin remains a classic product of the culture of her time and made her one of the most widely known American women wrtiers of the 19th century. In later life she returned to her home state, where she died on July 1, 1896 at age 85 in Hartford, Connecticut.

Duff Gordon, "Lady Lucile" One of the First Couturiers (c) By Polly Guerin

Who would have thought that in a male-dominated fashion world of the, 1900s Lucy Christina Sutherland would emerge as the designer, “Lucile,” a couture designer of international prestige. Born in 1863, she and her sister, the future romantic novelist Elinor Glyn, were pioneers who paved the way determined to succeed beyond expectations of women of their era. She survived a lackluster childhood in Canada and the Isle of Jersey, legal actions and business reversals and assorted marital problems the magnitude of such that would have challenged any modern woman to give up. Not, Lucile, she was independent and resourceful, but sadly she is unfortunately immortalized as the cold, imperious woman who, with her husband, Sir Cosmo, survived the terrible ending of the maiden voyage of the Titanic. However, Lucile is a powerful and unforgettable woman in history of fashion. Nonetheless, through her imagination and talent, she helped to lay the foundation for today’s couture and ready-to-wear markets, and the impact of fashion on society. DESIGNING WOMAN In 1884 Lucy married a well-heeled but eccentric alcoholic Scot, James Stuart Wallace who after several years of marriage abandoned Lucy and their young daughter Esme to a life of genteel poverty. In a move that presaged her innate audacity and independence, Lucy separated from and then divorced Wallace and moved to London. After a stint of dressmaking at home, the self-reliant Lucy started out in 1890 by dressmaking for her friends. It was the era of Aestheticism and her clients hoped to appear “artistic” and Lucy was ready for the task. She designed what she called “personality dresses” which allowed each woman’s individuality to shine. THE HOUSE OF ‘LUCILE’ Lucy’s fashions were utterly different and like Poiret, she honed in on what women craved in their attire producing romantic, sensual gowns, innovative at the time, such as draped skirts that revealed the legs. Utterly feminine lingerie was full of the frou-frou, silks and lace so popular during the Edwardian era. Her specialty was picturesque tea gowns in diaphanous layers of pastel silk called, “dream dresses” with names like “Birth of Venus,” worn unrestricted with mild corsetry. Her success blossomed and she opened her fashion house, Maison Lucile in 1890. Like Charles Frederick Worth Lucile held mannequin parades. However, she created over the top fashion shows into a stage productions, complete with mood-lighting, music, little gifts and programs. Customers were invited to watch the catwalk sipping tea and cookies while Lucile announced her ‘emotional gowns’ which were influenced by literature, history and the personality of her clients. The models were gorgeous, statuesque and beautiful and became sought-after as Gaiety Girls. EXPANDING LUCILE HORIZONS Lucile was becoming quite a wealthy woman. In 1903 her business was incorporated as “Lucile, Ltd” and she took on Sir Cosmo Edmund Duff Gordon, a dashing aristocrat as a partner in a shrewd business move. They married in Venice in 1900 and Sir Cosmo's keen business sense helped Lucile to expand her horizons. She opened branches in New York and Chicago. Despite French colleague warnings, “Nobody but a Frenchwoman knows how to dress,” her Paris Maison was prosperous. Madame Lucile was a keen business woman and licensed her name to Sears, Roebuck & Co. for a two-season lower-priced, mail-order fashion line. Lucile was on a high and began writing a weekly column for the New York Examiner. She also designed for the entertainment world designing costumes that became famous fashions, such as those for Lily Elsie, star of the smash-it operetta, The Merry Widow, the brightest light of the 1907 season and the large picture hat reminiscent of those of the 1780s, swept though fashionable society. Lucile also counted among her private clients the actress Sarah Bernhardt and the dancer Irene Castle. LEGAL ACTION and LUCILE In 1917 Lucile was embroiled in the case Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, wherein the Judge stripped her of the use of her own name after she contracted the sole right to market her name to her advertising agent. Shortly thereafter the House of Lucile began to collapse. By pre-WWI the name Lucile and the inspiration of its namesake designer were considered old-fashioned and démodé. Unable to adjust to changing fashion sensibilities and suffering from financial difficulties Lucile folded by the end of the 1920s. However, Lady Duff Gordon remained influential as a fashion columnist but her former success proved elusive. After penning her florid and discreet memoirs, Discretions and Indiscretions, in 1932, Lady Duff Gordon died three years later at the age 71. ABOUT THE TITANIC Urgent business required Lucile to travel with haste and although she had been reluctant to sail on the first crossing of the Titanic her fears were overcome when the booking agent reassured her, “Why the boat is absolutely unsinkable.” Lucile’s concerns were not without merit for as history tells the Titanic struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912. Legend has it that the Duff Gordon’s made their way onto Lifeboat 1, which could have accommodated 40 people, but held only 12 passengers when lowered into the water. The actions of Duff Gordon were viewed with suspicion when it was revealed that he tried to bribe the oarsmen to ignore drowning passengers as the boat that he and Lucy were in rowed swiftly away from the wreckage. She further drew the ire of her fellow passengers by complaining about her ruined nightdress when other people were dying. However, later in London, an official inquiry pronounced the charges unfounded.
LUCY DUFF GORDON IS A POWERFUL & UNFORGETTABLE WOMAN IN THE HISTORY OF FASHION. SHE WAS THE FIRST BRITISH DESIGNER TO ACHIEVE INTERNATIONAL RENOWN AND THE ACKNOWLEDGED INNOVATOR IN COUTURE STYLES, THE ORIGINATOR OF THE ‘MANNEQUIN PARADE,’ AND THE TRAINING OF THE FIRST PROFESSIONAL MODELS. SHE LIBERATED WOMEN WITH SLIT SKIRTS, LOW NECKLINES AND LESS RESTRICTIVE CORSETS. SHE DRESSED TREND-SETTING CLIENTELE OF ROYALTY, NOBILITY, AND STAGE & FILM PERSONALITIES, AND FOR ONE WONDERFUL PERIOD IN FASHION EVERY WOMAN WANTED TO WEAR A LUCILE GOWN. Lady Duff Gordon said, “PUT EVEN THE PLAINEST WOMAN INTO A BEAUTIFUL DRESS AND UNCONSCIOUSLY SHE WILL TRY TO LIVE UP TO IT.”

LANDON, LETITIA ELIZABETH A Literary Celebrity (c) By Polly Guerin

Although Letitia Elizabeth Landon, is relatively unknown today, the work of this beautiful, young English poetess and novelist of the late Georgian and early Victorian period is resurfacing with fascinated interest and feminist criticism has given critical interpretation of her work another perspective. She was born (1802-1838) into the lower middle class, only to become in her teenage years, a published poet, and eventually the most successful poet of her day. Her verse reveals a highly intelligent and emotional intensity. She wrote of passionate love at a time when women were conventionally restricted in their themes making her the favorite among the literary intelligentsia, known to her devoted readers as simply L.E.L. Her success as a young single woman carving out an independent career in the tough arena of literary London in the 1830’s recognizes her as a gentle woman determined to succeed beyond her dreams. Landon’s body of work is an impressive achievement but her mysteriously scandalous life and early death is once again being scrutinized. . THE SCANDAL OF LITERARY ENGLAND Landon’s writing observed today exerts a powerful fascination in the vividness and musicality of her distinctive voice. Her typical themes are about “Sorrow, Beauty, Love and Death.” The influential London periodical, the Literary Gazette began publishing her poetry at the age of seventeen. It is rumored that she had a long-term illicit affair with an older, married neighbor who is also the editor who published her first poem. The gossip mongers and letters circulated among London's social set about Landon and her lifestyle. When she escapes to the countryside every few years the rumors circulate: “Is it to bear his illegitimate children?” Rising above the tide of criticism she wrote movingly of romance and continued to partake in her high-spirited social life. LANDON’S PROLIFIC OEUVRE Landon’s voluminous publications are now again in print and renewed recognition of Landon’s impressive achievement may be due in part to the largess of the exhibit, "The World of Letitia Elizabeth Landon: A Literary Celebrity of the 1830s," which showcased at the Grolier Club in New York in 2011 with manuscripts, first editions, prints, photos and other materials, which illuminated the life and art of this outstanding British writer. Today Landon is attracting attention for her unbridled success as a poet and novelist. Her oeuvre was prolific. THE POETESS and NOVELIST In the eight years that followed the publication of Landon's first volume of verse in 1821, it and the eight collections that followed were extremely popular. Landon wrote reviews, articles, and stories for many London journals. In 1824 her volume of romantic narrative poems, "The Improvisatrice," became a major best seller. In 1831 Landon published her three-decker novel, "Romance and Reality," followed by successful historical novels, Francesca Carrara (1834), and Ethel Churchill (1837). Landon’s celebrity was widespread and her writings were translated into French, German, and Dutch, and distributed widely from Paris to St. Petersburg. She was no shrinking violet. Famous writers who counted among her admirers included Hawthorne, Whittier, Poe and many other prominent American authors. MARRIAGE AND MYSTERIOUS DEATH The subject of Landon’s romances is both mysterious and questionable. After the scandal of her teenage romance with a married man, her first editor, she later was engaged to one man or another, only to have those engagements broken by rumors. Why Landon finally chose to marry a man who would take her to far off Africa is yet another mystery. In 1838 Landon married George Maclean, a colonial official, possibly an abusive man, who sweeps her away to Cape Coast, West Africa (in present-day Ghana), where the lonely, often ailing, poetess is found with a vial of prussic acid in her hand, slumped against her bedroom door. Mysteriously dead at the age of 36, the question still remains. Is it by her own hand? Did she administer the elixir as a medicine, was it an accident? suicide? or was it murder? The answer is still pondered, but conjecture suggests that Landon was taking the prussic acid to soothe a stomach ailment.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon wrote movingly and delicately of ‘romance.’ Her vast body of work: poetry, her novels and her life are, once again, being scrutinized. Landon had much to say about life and love. In one of her famous quotes she says it all, “Delicious tears! The heart’s own dew.”

CONE, CLARIBEL and ETTA Art Connoisseurs (c) By Polly Guerin

Henri Matisse fondly called them “My two Baltimore ladies,” and for good reason as the patronage of Matisse by the Cone sisters was a paramount reason for his celebrity. As daughters of prosperous German-Jewish immigrants, the Cone sisters, Claribel and Etta, were supported in their connoisseur art quest by their family’s successful textile business, Cone Mills Corporation, a firm that became widely recognized for producing the fabrics for the fashion industry. The Cone sisters were well-educated and widely traveled independent modern women who were determined to succeed. They found in modern art an emblem of their own independence. Together the sisters amassed one of the finest collections of modern French art in the United States, discovering as they did Pablo Picasso an unknown at the time. Claribel and Etta had the foresight and generosity to envision their extraordinary array of art worlds in a public institution and bequeathed their collection of legendary masterpieces to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
THE GERTRUDE STEIN CONNECTION
With the financial means and important social connections the two wealthy, cultured Cone sisters became world travelers and art collectors. Always, impeccably dressed in ruffled collars and layered petticoats, they immersed themselves in the swirl of Parisian bohemian life and became enmeshed in the excitement of new art and ideas and fell in love with modern art. In Paris, Claribel and Etta spent time with the doyenne of the Parisian avant-garde, Gertrude Stein, and her brother Leo, who influenced their collection. In 1905, Etta went with Gertrude, another Baltimorean, by adoption, to the run-down studio of a young, unknown artist named Pablo Picasso and, on impulse, bought an etching. It was the first purchase of what turned out to be a vast, decades-long art shopping spree. By the time Etta bought her last Picasso 44 years later, she and her older sister, Claribel, had filled their Baltimore apartment with some 3,000 art objects, textiles and decorative arts, which they had acquired from their travels across Europe and expeditions to Africa and Asia. The Steins also introduced them to Henri Matisse at the Salon d’Automne. Tough decried by the critiques for his bright, vividly hued paintings, Etta was intrigued by Matisse’s work and made her first of many visits to the artist’s studio. Etta was close to the entire Matisse family and maintained an ongoing correspondence with the painter as well as his daughter Marguerite and his son Pierre, an art dealer in New York. Ever a devoted patron, she wrote to him, “Of course, I want to do everything I can to add to your father’s fame.” Throughout the years, however, the sisters became friends of both artists.
LEGENDARY MASTERPIECES
Claribel and Etta seem to have had an insatiable desire for shopping, browsing in Parisian lace and button shops, and going to opera, socializing with friends, and buying art at an astonishing rate. And they kept separate records. Legendary masterpieces included Matisse’s “Blue Nude” (1907), Gauguin’s “Woman with a Mango (1892) and Cezanne’s “Mount Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Bemus Quarry (circa 1897). Claribel acquired paintings by Pissarro, Sisley and Van Gogh; Etta purchased works by Degas, Rodin, both bought Cezanne, Renoir, and more than twenty works by Matisse. Most of the art collected are images of women including Matisse’s 1929 The Yellow Dress, which shows a woman centered in her own world, very much like the Cone sisters’ independent penchant. In his 1937 Purple Robe and Anemones, a woman in a purple dress sits in a room in a classic Matisse interior filled with patterned rugs, screens, flowery drapes and vases of flowers. The Cone sisters collected art because they loved it and lived in two adjoining apartments in Baltimore.
THE BALTIMORE LADIES
Claribel Cone (1864-1929) and Etta Cone (1870-1949) grew up in a large, close-knit German Jewish family of twelve children. Their father, Herman Cone (Kahn before he immigrated to America) owned a wholesale grocery business which afforded the family with a comfortable lifestyle. However, it was the investment of Herman’s two eldest sons, Moses and Ceasar, in the textile business, The Cone Mills Corporation that made the family wealthy. The brother’s support of their two unmarried sisters enabled Claribel and Etta to devote their lives to collecting masterpieces of modern art. Claribel pursued a medical degree, an unusual path in the late nineteenth century America. Etta was content to stay in her elder sister’s shadow, becoming the family caretaker and spending her time studying music, French and art. There were no early signs that the Cones would develop a taste for modern art but there interests in collection art, textiles and objects were eclectic.
Claribel and Etta Cone were wealthy socialites but they had Yankee spirit and were blessed with excess capital and the leisure pursuit to collect the finest collections of Modern Art in the United States. Considering their accomplishment, the amassing of the Cone Collection, is reason enough to admire two women determined to succeed, who sharpened and refined their collective eye and put Baltimore on the map.