Charlotte Perriand Wins

By the 20th century, major institutional obstacles began to disappear, allowing women to formally train in art, architecture and design. Women enrolled in these schools in droves. At the same time that Modernism was developing, it was also becoming marginalized. As critics and scholars began to define Modernism, the work of women designers was left off the pages.

Women created great original works of quality design, and in significant amounts. They acquired professional skills which they exhibited in public venues, and began to relentlessly pursue active careers. They created a diverse range of style and ground-breaking designs, and many of their names still in the 21st century are obscured by the shadows of men.

In February, a Paris court issued a decision in favor of the daughter of Charlotte Perriand. Perriand wasn't given proper authorship of three of her designs; instead, the works were attributed to her sometime male collaborator Jean Prouvé. Pernette Martin-Barsac, Perriand's daughter, fought against the Sonnabend Gallery for misattribution and won. She had been fighting this for a decade (or more) even when the Pompidou Center hosted a retrospective of Perriand's work in 2005. When these three designs went to auction, Prouvé was credited as the designer.

Perriand dealt with this during her lifetime. In the 1950s the Tunisia bookshelves was launched on the market under the label of "Jean Prouvé Studios."

Tunisian Bookshelf, pic from MoMa

Information gets regurgitated over and over, with assumption and bias. Lately we have come to care more about the look of a design over who designed it and how it fits in. We have a unique opportunity to study the range of activity and information about women designers.

Perriand's floor plan for a student room in the dormitory building, Maison de la Tunisie,
at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris

Why aren't we doing this?

Student Room, Maison de la Tunisie, 1952
Perriand was put in charge of a group that was to design and furnish 40 student rooms. 

Both images above from Mary McLeod's (editor) Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living, 2003.

The Lovely Charlotte

Charlotte Perriand -- most certainly an “It” girl. She donned a Josephine Baker hairstyle, wore a short, breezy graphic dress hinting at an exposed knee, and wrapped her neck with a chromium-plated ball-bearing necklace she designed for herself.

She was spirited, independent, liberated and brilliant. The "It" girl in those days symbolized tremendous progress women were making in society. First coined in 1927 to describe the actress Clara Bow’s sex appeal and sass, the “It” girl was a “New Woman” -- the modern woman who broke through the repressions of the past. She embraced life, held a strange magnetism, and was fully and naturally confident.

Charlotte was formally trained, well-read and determined to develop a style relevant to the "machine age". At 24, she walked into Le Corbusier’s studio and asked him to hire her as a furniture designer. His response was: “We don’t embroider cushions here,” and showed her the door.

Unfettered, she worked on her own and exhibited her project titled "Bar Under the Roof” at the Salon d'Automne of 1927. She aimed at providing affordable cutting-edge designs for the middle class consumer. She had placed a bar in a small attic. Finished the counter top with nickel-plated steel and added high stools and tables clad in in the same material. Across from the bar she had a card table and low seats upholstered in pink and blue-violet leather. Shiny hard metal plated forms with lots of reflective surfaces -- quite a difference from the more “traditional” styles of Art Deco.

There is no decoration, no colorful patterning, no soft textures, no pictures on the walls, or knick-knacks, rugs or wall coverings. She brought the new materials from the outside in transforming a private space and its insulated world into something modern and into something most people could afford.

A woman designing and presenting a bar at that time was ballsy.

It spoke to a different audience and it was acclaimed by the critics. Shortly afterward Le Corbusier hired her.

A true humanitarian, she was determined to reveal new ways of living. She created some of the most significant furniture designs of the 20th century not only aesthetically, but by providing better solutions that were also affordable for the middle class. Modernity was no longer exclusively for the wealthy.

So when the “It” girls are talked about today, and splashed across pages of glossy magazines, or followed on film driving about after slugging back five apple martinis, making soft porn movies or flashing unmentionables, let’s pause and think for a moment . . . these are our “It” girls.