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Syrie Maugham
Gwendoline Maud Syrie Maugham ( Barnardo, formerly Wellcome; 10 July 1879 – 25 July 1955) was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s who popularised rooms decorated entirely in white. Early life Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo was born in England on 10 July 1879. She was the daughter of Thomas John Barnardo, the founder of the Barnardo's charity for destitute children, and his wife, Sarah Louise "Syrie" Elmslie. Gwendoline was the eldest girl in a family of six. As an adult, she preferred to be known by her last christian name (Syrie). Syrie's Irish-born father had converted at age 16 to Protestant evangelicalism, joining the Plymouth Brethren, and believed in daily Bible reading, obedience, strict punctuality and the forgoing of worldly pleasures including drinking (alcohol), smoking and visiting the theatre. A columnist later claimed that this strict upbringing was ‘a good example that one’s strongest motives in life are reactions from youth’ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton (14 January 1904 – 18 January 1980) was a British fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, and interior designer, as well as costume designer and set designer for stage and screen. His accolades include three Academy Awards and four Tony Awards. Early life and education Beaton was born on 14 January 1904 in Hampstead, north London, the son of Ernest Walter Hardy Beaton (1867–1936), a prosperous timber merchant, and his wife, Esther "Etty" Sisson (1872–1962). His grandfather, Walter Hardy Beaton (1841–1904), had founded the family business of "Beaton Brothers Timber Merchants and Agents", and his father followed into the business. Ernest Beaton was an amateur actor and met his wife, Cecil's mother Esther ("Etty") when playing the lead in a play. She was the daughter of a Cumbrian blacksmith named Joseph Sisson and had come to London to visit her married sister. Ernest and Etty Beaton had four children – Cecil; two daught ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metropolitan Museum Of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of largest art museums, largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million visitors in 2023, it is the List of most-visited museums in the United States, most-visited museum in the United States and the List of most-visited art museums, fifth-most visited art museum in the world. In 2000, its permanent collection had over two million works; it currently lists a total of 1.5 million works. The collection is divided into 17 curatorial departments. The Met Fifth Avenue, The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile, New York, Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's list of largest art museums, largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately building ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Babe Paley
Barbara Cushing Mortimer Paley (July 5, 1915 – July 6, 1978) was an American magazine editor and socialite. Affectionately known as Babe throughout her life, Paley made notable contributions to the field of magazine editing. In recognition of her distinctive fashion sense, she was inducted into the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1958. Together with her two sisters, Minnie and Betsey, she was a popular debutante in her youth and the trio were dubbed "The Fabulous Cushing Sisters" in high society. She was married twice; first, to the sportsman Stanley G. Mortimer Jr. and second, to CBS founder William S. Paley. Early life Barbara Cushing Mortimer Paley, born Barbara Cushing in Boston, Massachusetts, was the daughter of renowned brain surgeon Harvey Cushing, who belonged to a prominent Cleveland medical family and held professorships at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Yale, and Katharine Stone (née Crowell), a granddaughter of Ohio congressman John Crowell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mona Von Bismarck
Countess Mona von Bismarck-Schönhausen (''née'' Strader; February 5, 1897 – July 10, 1983), also known as Mona Bismarck, was an American socialite, fashion icon, and philanthropist. Her five husbands included Harrison Williams, among the richest men in America, and Count Albrecht Eduard "Eddie" von Bismarck-Schönhausen, a grandson of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. She was the first American to be named "The Best Dressed Woman in the World" by a panel of top couturiers, including Coco Chanel, and she was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame. Early life She was born as Mona Strader in Louisville, Kentucky in 1897 to Robert Sims Strader and his wife, Bird O'Shockeny. Her parents divorced in 1902, and she and her brother were raised in Liberty Heights, Kentucky by their paternal grandmother. Through their mother, Patricia Strader, she was the great-aunt to automobile racers David "Salt" Walther and George "Skipp" Walther III. Marriages In 1917, she ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Molyneux
Edward Henry Molyneux () (5 September 1891 – 23 March 1974) was a leading British fashion designer whose salon in Paris was in operation from 1919 until 1950. He was characterised as a modernist designer who played with the refinements of couture style, a modernist aesthetic, and the desire to be socially and culturally advanced. Early life Edward Molyneux was born on 5 September 1891 in Hampstead, London, to Justin Molyneux and Lizzy Kenny. He was of Irish and French Huguenot ancestry. His uncle was Major Edward Mary Joseph Molyneux, who became known for his paintings of the Kashmir region. Edward was educated at Beaumont College, a Roman Catholic Public school (United Kingdom), public school. Owing to the death of his father, he left school at the age of 16 to support himself and his mother while pursuing his ambitions as a painter and illustrator. Career Molyneux found employment as a sketch artist for the London edition of the American magazine ''The Smart Set'', where h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elsa Schiaparelli
Elsa Schiaparelli ( , , ; 10 September 1890 – 13 November 1973) was an Italian fashion designer from an Italian nobility, aristocratic background. She created the Schiaparelli (fashion house), house of Schiaparelli in Paris in 1927, which she managed from the 1930s to the 1950s. Starting with knitwear, Schiaparelli's designs celebrated Surrealism and eccentric fashions. Her collections were famous for unconventional and artistic themes like the human body, insects, or trompe-l'œil, and for the use of bright colors like her "shocking pink". Schiaparelli famously collaborated with Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau. Along with Coco Chanel, her greatest rival, she is regarded as one of the most prominent European figures in fashion between the two World Wars. Her clients included the heiress Daisy Fellowes and actress Mae West. Early life Elsa Luisa Maria Schiaparelli was born at the Palazzo Corsini, Rome. Her mother, Giuseppa Maria de Dominicis, was a Neapolitan aristocrat. Her f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DeWitt Wallace
William Roy DeWitt Wallace ( ; November 12, 1889 – March 30, 1981), publishing as DeWitt Wallace, was an American magazine publisher. Wallace co-founded ''Reader's Digest'' with his wife Lila Bell Wallace, publishing the first issue in 1922. Life and career Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, where his father was on the faculty (and later president) of Macalester College, he attended Mount Hermon School as a youth (now Northfield Mount Hermon School). Wallace attended college at Macalester from 1907 to 1909 and transferred to the University of California, Berkeley for two years. He returned to St. Paul in 1912 and was hired by a publishing firm specializing in farming literature. During World War I, Wallace enlisted in the U.S. Army and was wounded. He spent four months in a France, French hospital recovering from his injuries, passing the time by reading American magazines. Returning to the U.S., Wallace spent every day of the next six months at the Minneap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oveta Culp Hobby
Oveta Culp Hobby (January 19, 1905 – August 16, 1995) was an American government official and businesswoman who served as the first United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare from 1953 to 1955. A member of the Republican Party, Hobby was the second woman ever to serve in a presidential cabinet. She also served as the first director of the Women's Army Corps from 16 May 1942 to 11 July 1945, and was sequentially editor, publisher and chair of the board of the ''Houston Post''. She entered public service when President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed her administrator of the Federal Security Agency, soon after reorganized as a federal executive department, known then as Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; and Hobby became its first head. Early life Culp was born on January 19, 1905, in Killeen, Texas, to Texas lawyer and legislator Isaac William Culp and Emma Elizabeth Hoover. She briefly attended Mary Hardin Baylor College for Women, and attended law ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marie Tempest
Dame Mary Susan Etherington (15 July 1864 – 15 October 1942), known professionally as Marie Tempest, was an English singer and actress. Tempest became a famous soprano in late Victorian era, Victorian light opera and Edwardian musical comedies. Later, she became a leading comic actress and toured widely in North America and elsewhere. She was, at times, her own theatre manager during a career spanning 55 years. She was also instrumental in the founding of the actors' union Equity (trade union), Equity in Britain. Life and career Tempest was born in London. Her parents were Edwin Etherington (1838–1880), a stationer, and his wife, Sarah Mary (''née'' Castle). She had a sister, Florence Etherington, who married the theatre manager Michael Levenston. Tempest was educated at Midhurst School and an Ursulines, Ursuline convent in Tildonk, Belgium. Later, she studied music in Paris and at the Royal Academy of Music in London, as a singing pupil of Manuel Patricio Rodríguez Garc� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wallis Simpson
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor (born Bessie Wallis Warfield, later Spencer and then Simpson; June 19, 1896 – April 24, 1986) was an American socialite and the wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor (former King Edward VIII). Their intention to marry and her status as a divorcée caused a constitutional crisis that led to Abdication of Edward VIII, Edward's abdication. Wallis grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father died shortly after her birth, and she and her widowed mother were partly supported by their wealthier relatives. Her first marriage, to United States Navy officer Win Spencer, was punctuated by periods of separation and eventually ended in divorce. In 1931, while married to her second husband Ernest Simpson, she met Edward, the Prince of Wales. Five years later, after Edward's accession as King of the United Kingdom, Wallis divorced Ernest to marry Edward. The King's desire to marry a woman who had two living ex-husbands threatened to cause a constitutional cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frances Adler Elkins
Frances Adler Elkins (7 November 1888 – 26 August 1953), was one of the twentieth century's most prominent interior designers. According to one magazine editor, she was "the first great California decorator". According to ''The New York Times'', Elkins "pioneered vibrant interiors, in which solid historical references met effervescent modernist fantasy." She was the sister of the architect David Adler (architect), David Adler. Early life Frances Adler Elkins was born in Milwaukee on November 7, 1888. Her father was a manufacturer and wholesaler of men's garments. Elkins was a younger sister of the renowned architect David Adler (architect), David Adler. Elkins did not go to college, but when Adler moved to Paris to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts, Ecole des Beaux-Arts (from 1908 to 1911), Elkins often visited him. While in Europe, she met the interior designer Jean-Michel Frank and the sculptor Alberto Giacometti. She collaborated with both, making suggestions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Michel Frank
Jean-Michel Frank (28 February 1895 – 8 March 1941) was a French interior designer known for minimalist interiors decorated with plain-lined but sumptuous furniture made of luxury materials, such as shagreen, mica, and intricate straw marquetry. He had an eye for exotic patterns, specifically in veneers, including snake and sharkskin. His work became widely known in the 1930s when select, higher classes demanded his furniture. He is known for being associated with the Art Deco movement. Early life Jean-Michel Frank was born in Paris, a son of Léon Frank, a banker, and his wife and cousin, the former Nanette Frank. He was a first cousin of Otto Frank, the cousin-in-law of Edith Frank and, therefore, a first cousin, once removed, of the diarist Anne Frank. Frank was fluent in French, English and German. During school, he was bullied by his classmates for being Jewish; this was during the time in which the Dreyfus Affair divided France. World War I came with many challenges ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
