Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA

#textilecollector #textilecollection #fabriccollector #collectingvintage #patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory #designhistory #textiledesigner #americandesign #artistdesignedtextiles #modernism#midcenturymodern #moderndesign #patternonpattern #vintagestyle
#vintagefashion

...or do you wait for an accumulation of goodies and then have a little cataloguing party?! What info do you capture in your process? Do you dx regularly? Do tell!

Which of these recent acquisitions (ready for their close ups📸) should I share first?!

Where my fellow textile collectors at? Informal poll: how do you manage your collection? Do you inventory everything using a spreadsheet? Or do you use a collection management database? Do you catalogue each one as it's acquired...

There are some nice examples from this collection at the @mfahouston 🍂🍃🍂

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#calisterthomas #designworksbedfordstuyvesant #patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory #designhistory #textiledesigner #ddandleslietillett #thetilletts #americandesign #blackdesign #blackdesigners

This series of fabrics was not produced by DWBS, but by P. Kaufmann, who operated Woodco. Thomas had left DWBS by the debut of this "Benin Empire" collection, which she noted were inspired by a collection of 14th-century African sculptures in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

"I was very excited about the idea. It's hard enough to find a job anyway, especially if you're black, and the idea of doing this kind of work and with other black people really appealed to me. Here I can design anything the way I want. Here, I have real freedom."

A recent flea-market find: 'Hausa' by Calister Thomas for Woodco, 1 of 5 designed by her & copyrighted May 1972. Thomas had been working for a weaving company in Manhattan when dd & Leslie Tillett invited her to be chief designer for the Design Works of Bedford Stuyvesant in 1970. She was only 22!

Guess the repeat is on this one? Nearly six feet. Six feet!!! It's almost as if photographer Carl Van Vechten was placing human subjects next to Frank's work for scale. One of the most palampore-inspired Frank design, which is reason enough to love it.

#carlvanvechten #harlemrenaissance #carmendelavallade #mattiwildadobbs #chesterhimes#joseffrank #modernism #moderndesign #scandinaviandesign #scandinavianmodern #patternplayusa #sayitwithtextiles #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory #designhistory #textiledesigner

Carmen de Lavallade (1️⃣2️⃣: dancer/choreographer/actor, 1955), Mattiwilda Dobbs (3️⃣: opera soprano, also 1955), and Chester B. Himes (4️⃣: author, 1962)...and 'Hawaii' by Josef Frank (5️⃣6️⃣7️⃣: designed for Svenkst Tenn while the Austrian-Swede was living in New York in 1943-45).

Lurex in ALLLLL the colors ✨🌈🧶

Possibly the best Lurex ad in "The Thread of the Story is #Lurex" campaign (American Fabrics mag, Spring 1959).

I am never not thinking about Lurex.

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#dorothyliebes #patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textilehistory #designhistory

I hear French girl summer is a thing…🍇🍋🍉🍐🍒

‘Left Bank’ by Greeff, c. 1950, my collection 🩵

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#frenchgirlsummer #picnic #piquenique #picnicchic #greeff #leftbank #patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory #designhistory #americandesign #noveltyprint #vintagenoveltyprint

The swimsuit that went to war...by Cole of California, 1943-1945. In a range of colors and, yes, patterns, but it's tough not to choose "Parachute White" for D-Day...

🪂🤍

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#dday #coleofcalifornia #patriotic #americana #patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory

And party clothes for Alexander Girard’s birthday today are provided by @gitmanvintage 🥳 who have released one of my favorite Girard designs, 'Cutouts’ (1954) in a brilliant (and true to the designer’s color sense) coral colorway...
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@girardstudio #alexandergirard #patternplayusa

This ensemble appears in Women’s Wear Daily’s feature on the exhibition, and a Simpson advertisement in Vogue (April 1945) shows McCardell’s dress, accessorized with matching slip-on shoes. Dynasty/Pottery was prominently displayed in a “Museum Prints” advertisement in Vogue’s December 1945 issue.

—was preceded by a color slide show of the fabrics used and the artworks from which the designs were derived. Wesley Simpson’s textiles comprised the second group shown; McCardell led with a halter-neck dress, followed by a playsuit with “umbrella-shaped shorts" under a sleeveless tunic coat.”

Claire McCardell of Townley Frocks, Inc. was the designer paired with Bemelmans’s print for two creations premiered in a “fashion promenade” for the in the central hall of the Morgan Wing on March 20, 1945. Each grouping of garments—five in total, encompassing 34 distinctive day and evening looks

Bemelmans’s original sketch for this pattern is also shown. Simpson asked Bemelmans to contribute designs based on Metropolitan Museum of Art artifacts, which where then shown in the museum's 1945 show, “American Fashions and Fabrics.”

specifically, a large buff-colored jar purchased from Egyptologist Howard Carter. It was produced on ribbed cotton and a drapey, slubbed rayon “shantung,” as is the green example (@coraginsburg) manufactured by the North-Carolina based Enka firm, which promoted its innovative synthetic fibers.

Claire McCardell's birthday deserves a special story, so let's invite #LudwigBemelmans (of Madeline fame) and #WesleySimpson (of art fabric fame) to the party! 🎉

Bemelmans’s Dynasty pattern (also called Pottery) is based on predynastic Egyptian pottery of the Late Naqada period (ca. 3500-3300 BCE)

SAH announces the winner of the 2025 Exhibition Catalogue Award:
Susan Brown and Alexa Griffith Winton
A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes
Yale University Press, 2023

Read more about this year's publication award winners: www.sah.org/programs/sah...

Congratulations! A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes, edited by Susan Brown & Alexa Griffith Winton and published in association with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has won the 2025 exhibition catalogue award from the Society of Architectural Historians.
#dorothyliebes

🌈🦓🌈🦓🌈🦓

Rainbow strié on cotton duck for #NationalTextileDay...a Tillett specialty, those hand pulled stripes-on-stripes. Enjoy the riiiiiiiiiiiiide!

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#patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory #designhistory #ddandleslietillett #thetilletts #textiledesigner #rainbow

Model wearing a skirt from the Dorothy Liebes/Bonnie Cashin Skirtings Collection, standing in front of the Liebes-designed theater curtain for the American Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair, 1958; Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Join me for this free virtual presentation! Register at link below.

🌈Dorothy Liebes: Modern Fashion’s Starchitect

📅 Tuesday, April 1

⏰6:00-7:00pm CDT

Presented by Leigh Wishner
www.patternplayusa.com

www.mononaterrace.com/event-group/...

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#patternplayusa #sayitwithtextiles #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory #designhistory #textiledesigner #americandesign #artistdesignedtextiles #artisttextiles #modernism #modernist #midcenturymodern #moderndesign #noveltyprint #vintagenoveltyprint

These disks were one of the keys to data processing speed & computer size that made our modern versions possible. It is one of the most exciting designs ever. It says so much with so little. Its success doesn't ride on its figural nature—it's the rhythm.

This pattern is special to me because it was the first to spark my realization that sometimes a novelty subject (here, IBM magnetic computer memory storage disks) transcends category by sheer mastery of modernist sensibility.

www.ibm.com/history/magn...

‘IBM Disks’ ☢️

This was designed by Angelo Testa as a corporate commission from IBM. He hand-screen-printed at least two designs for IBM, this and another using the famous font logo designed by #PaulRand.

Textile, Drag Box Plaid Cotton with hand-pulled stripes of red, pink, orange, yellow, teal, and light blue, with a plaid of straight and curving lines applied on top in emerald green and navy.

Trust me when I say you won't believe what we've been "dragging" up! Here's your first dose:

'Drag Box Plaid'
d.d. Tillett (American, 1917 - 2008) & Leslie Tillett (American, b. England, 1915 - 1992)
Drag-box printed cotton
@cooperhewitt

#dragbox #tillettfabrics

cprhw.tt/o/48Kia/