To browse Academia. In , the extremely successful American interior designer Elsie de Wolfe, at the age of sixty-one, married Sir Charles Mendl, after her thirtyyear companionship with Elisabeth Marbury. As the story goes, when Garland threatened to sue for her contracted salary, Nast warned that he would expose her 'morals', 1 or as Virginia Woolf put it, Nast 'threatened to reveal Todd's private sins'. The importance of fashions in clothing to the emergence of distinct modern lesbian identities and cultures have been recognised for some time now, and have come into particular prominence in the bourgeoning field of sapphic modernity studies Elliott and Wallace, ; Latimer, ; Doan, Design historians have also become increasingly interested in how so many of the women who engaged in the female-dominated practice and profession of interior design in the early part of the twentieth century were what we might now identify as lesbians Elliott, However, if we extend our scope to include women who dedicated creative and critical energy to modernist reconfigurations and reconsiderations of domestic space and design, we can count artists such as Romaine Brooks and Gluck.
This chapter is committed to understanding the ways in which women's interior design contributed to the cultural field of sapphic modernity-best characterised,. Seasonal settlement. Dixon, P. Sidestone Press, Log in with Facebook Log in with Google. Remember me on this computer. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Need an account? Click here to sign up. That is to say, that for many women in the first few decades of the twentieth century, becoming non-heterosexual was synonymous with becoming modern, and I argue that certain modes of reimagining and refashioning domestic space and design were critical components of these becomings.
As of , however, these forms had not yet cohered into a stable or clearly communicable lesbian identity, and in dress as well as interior design women seem to have capitalised on this instability or ambiguity. For business I have a smart little tailored suit consisting of a black coat and waistcoat and a close-fitting black and white check skirt just short of my knees. Once a week I have my Eton crop trimmed to keep it as short as possible and every morning I dress it with brilliantine till it resembles a smooth and glossy skull-cap on my head.
Clearly, this fascinatingly ambiguous cross was not yet read as an unequivocal sign of lesbian identity or desire.
Both women carefully cultivated highly fashionable forms of hyper-femininity throughout the stylishly mannish s and throughout their lives. In her later years she underwent extensive cosmetic surgery and throughout her life she paid great attention to her appearance through careful diet and daily exercise. Moreover, while Garland and de Wolfe were both known for their highly stylised femininity, they seem to have appreciated modern modes of female masculinity no less than Brooks, Gluck and Gray.
