We have become so used to seeing designer's names on everything from bed linens to chocolates that even expensive imported spaghetti can justify its existence and its price by being called designer pasta. Most people have stopped noticing it, so ubiquitous has the practice become; those who still find it annoying attribute it to the overcommercialization of our all too commercial, status-seeking age. The practice, however, goes back farther than the last few decades, and some of the earlier participants in the name-for hire game may surprise even the more jaded among us.
One of the most influential and enterprising of all couturiers was Paul Poiret, whose advanced designs in women's fashion did as much to liberate the post-Edwardian female as the music, the mores, and the aftermath of World War I. Poiret is celebrated now (like many originators, he died in poverty after sensational success) as one of the two or three greatest and most influential designers of all time. His freeing of the body led to the abandonment of bustles and stays, long trailing gowns, and other encumbrances of the time. It also led to the wild abandon of the flapper age and what many see as its excesses - shorter skirts, lower necklines, lighter morals, and later curfews.
It is, however, Poiret at the flush of his success that concerns us here. He pioneered not only a new look for women but also a new role for the fashion designer. Poiret spread his ideas outside of the strictly delineated world of the French haute couture. He wanted his stamp on everything - children's clothes, wallpapers, textiles, everything. Sound familiar?
But his system was different than what we see today in which there is a proliferation of designer labels on everything. Poiret opened studios to create patterns and design for each of the areas he was interested in, and he hired other artists as well as craftspeople to create the designs. In the area of home furnishings. Raoul Dufy, one of his most successful and accomplished employees, became a great painter whose canvasses are recognized and admired today.
Dufy's wonderfully light and airy seascapes, brilliantly colored landscapes, and glimpses of society are in every important museum and collection of modern art. Equally joyous are the designs he produced for Poiret's workshops. Like the canvasses of his Impressionist and Fauvist periods, the fabric patterns leap and sparkle with color and the characteristic exuberance of the artist depicting flowers, birds, geometric forms, and even people.
As fresh as when Dufy originally created them, several of the patterns are once again available in fabrics for home furnishings. Some of the designs have never been produced before. Now, they are ready to grace the walls, windows, and furniture in a variety of fabrics, delighting thousands of art lovers who could not afford a Dufy canvas but can now decorate entire rooms in his charming, ageless style.
Even before the early twentieth-century collaborations of Dufy and Poiret, there had been a celebrated coming together of artists and artisans that was, and is, deeply influential in all aspects of interior design. Among the poets, painters, writers, and other artists who constituted the pre-Raphaelite movement was William Morris, a man and a talent to be reckoned with even
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