Diana Dew (June 25, 1943 – February 2008) was an American fashion designer known for creating early electronic clothing, or

e-textiles Electronic textiles or e-textiles are fabrics that enable electronic components such as batteries, lights, sensors, and microcontrollers to be embedded in them. They are not to be confused witsmart textiles which are fabrics that have been de ...

, in the 1960s.

Early life

Born on June 25, 1943, in Memphis, Tennessee, Dew was a fashion model from age four to fourteen and attended the Memphis Academy of Art. She attended

Bard College Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark. Founded in 1860, ...

for one year and studied

method acting Method acting, informally known as The Method, is a range of training and rehearsal techniques, as formulated by a number of different theatre practitioners, that seeks to encourage sincere and expressive performances through identifying with, u ...

in New York City for several months before transferring to the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

to study engineering. Dew briefly designed theater costumes in Memphis at the Front Street Theater, then moved to California, where

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...

at Berkeley accepted her. There, she quickly became disillusioned with the counterculture scene, rejecting LSD for its tendency to "become your normal pattern, and then you’re still searching for something new."

Fashion design

Dew moved back to New York City, where she "made the East Side folk music scene" and designed clothes for

Joan Baez Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...

. From there, she relocated to Boston and opened a custom dress shop named Isis on Harvard Square, but was ultimately unable to attract a youth clientele that could afford her high-end designs. In the late summer of 1966, she became a designer for Puritan's Paraphernalia division after a referral from a modeling agency, and eventually presided over her own division, Experipuritaneous. Stylistically melding two contemporary institutions—the psychedelic world of the counterculture and the futuristic and innovative field of space travel—Dew's designs epitomized the ethos of the 1960s and were met with widespread acclaim. Powered by rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries, her designs could stay lit for up to 5 hours. Projecting a hallucinogenic light show, the speed of the strobe-like flash was adjustable via a potentiometer worn at the waist. Intended to be "like an LSD trip with none of the hang-ups," her designs debuted for more than $150 apiece in February 1967 at the Paraphernalia boutique in New York City. Dew became a popular costume designer for musicians. She created suits for the psychedelic band the Blues Magoos that would grow brighter as the sound intensified on stage. One of these suits is currently in a Smithsonian Institution time capsule as an example of 1960s art, set to be opened in 2065. In 1968, Dew's work was included in the groundbreaking exhibition "Body Covering", held at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York City, which focused on the relationship between technology and apparel.

Later life and death

After a brief stint in an all-woman rock band named Creamcheese that wore Dew's designs on stage, Dew turned her focus to hydroponic sprout farming and raising her three sons. She married twice, once to songwriter Richard Lee "Rick" Curtis and the second to a local carpenter. She died in her home in February 2008 and was cremated. Likewise, she was survived by her sons and grandson.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dew, Diana 1943 births 2008 deaths American fashion designers People from Memphis, Tennessee