It’s National Coming Out Day! Did you know some of the most iconic trailblazers in interior design were not only members of the LGBTQ+ community, but were also open about it at a time when few others were? To celebrate LGBT History Month (@equalityforum), and this day in particular, we’re highlighting three #outandproud women in interior design and architecture.
#1: Elsie de Wolfe
Considered by many to be the first to establish interior design as a profession, Elise de Wolfe (1865-1950) was a New York stage actress with an interest in set design when she met Elisabeth Marbury, a theatrical agent (and later, one of Broadway’s first woman producers) in a Tuxedo Park, N.Y., country club in 1884. She abandoned her career as an actress and started earning commissions after decorating the Irving House, one of the first homes the two women shared on 17th Street and Irving Place in Manhattan. “The moment Elsie de Wolfe turned her back upon the theater, the golden gates were flung open and the angels who had stood at the cradle of her birth…came forward waving their magic wands,” Marbury wrote in her 1924 memoir, “My Crystal Ball.”
Named a 2015 LGBT History Month icon by @equalityforum, the organization, in de Wolfe’s biography, listed notable clients such as Amy Vanderbilt, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Cole Porter, who immortalized de Wolfe in song. “She helped set the style for the world’s elite, introducing a light color scheme and chintz fabrics at a time when dark wood and heavy Victorian curtains were in vogue. She also helped popularize animal prints, faux finishes and chaise lounges.”
Her home design columns, which appeared in women’s magazines of the day, were compiled into a 1913 best seller, “The House in Good Taste.” She and Marbury lived together until Marbury’s death in 1933.
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#2 Amaza Lee Meredith
A true multi-hyphenate by today’s standards, Amaza Lee Meredith (1895-1984) was a self-taught architect, fine artist, educator and interior designer. She founded the art department at Virginia State University and served as department chair until her retirement in 1958. Prohibited from pursuing an architectural degree because of she was a mixed-race Black woman (architectural schools did not admit women until the 1970s), Meredith received a master’s degree in fine arts education from Teacher’s College at Columbia University, where she met her life partner, Dr. Edna Meade Colson.
She designed multiple dwellings and buildings throughout her life, but is most well known for her own residence, Azurest South, completed in 1939, in the International Style, and which now serves as the UVS Alumni House, according to “A Guide to the Amaza Lee Meredith Papers, 1912, 1930-1938.” She also, along with her sister Maude, bought, created and developed a subdivision of land in Sag Habor, N.Y., they called "Azurest North" under the incorporated name, Azurest Syndicate, Inc., as a vacation destination for Black families.
Azurest South was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
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#3 Eileen Gray
Like Meredith, Eileen Gray (1878-1976) was a self-taught architect who studied fine arts. Born in Ireland and educated in London, Gray was an openly bisexual interior designer and furniture designer who began her career by opening a lacquer workshop. She is an unacknowledged titan of the Modern Arts Movement in architecture, but eclipsed by men for her gender.
One of her most noted architectural achievements is a modern, white house in Southern France she designed and built as her own residence she shared with her longtime partner and fellow architect, Jean Badovici, and completed in 1929. She named the house E.1027: “E” for Eileen, “10” for J (the tenth letter of the alphabet), “2” for B and “7” for G, according to “Battle Lines: E. 1027,” in Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts. In interior design, it was her work on Frenchwoman Juliette Levy’s Rue de Lota apartment that Gray made her mark, which has been called the “epitome of Art Deco” and was featured in Harper’s Bazaar in 1920.
By the late mid-20th century, there was renewed interest in Gray’s work. The National Museum of Ireland features a permanent exhibition, and she has been the subject of documentaries. In 2009, one of her pieces sold at auction for over $28 million, at the time setting an auction record for 20th-century decorative art, according to Reuters.
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Image credits: 1. Elise de Wolf. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. (1840 - 2020). Elsie De Wolfe Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47de-c4a8-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
2. "Azurest South," Amaza Lee Meredith. AJ Belongia, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
3. Eileen Gray. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eileen_gray.JPG, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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