Description
Marjorie Merriweather Post’s changing fashion sense, and the development of her personal identity, reveal her as an icon in a century of huge change in fashion.
Marjorie Merriweather Post was one of America’s most prominent women and one of the first females to serve on the board of a major corporation. She was also a philanthropist, patron of the arts, and socialite with a magnificent wardrobe collected over seventy years. Marjorie Post worked closely with fashion designers across Europe and the United States, creating an elegant image of distinction throughout the course of her youth to adult life.
Ingenue to Icon illustrates her spectacular clothes collection, including numerous accessories—shoes, hats, handbags, fans, and parasols—and features a wealth of portraits and photographs of Post wearing them. Curator Howard Vincent Kurtz chronicles the progression of Post’s development into an icon of elegance during a century that witnessed vast changes in fashion. The volume also includes an introduction by Nancy Rubin Stuart, the collaboration of Trish Donnally on the original manuscript, a glossary of designers and dressmakers, a bibliography, and an index.
About the Author
Howard Vincent Kurtz is the associate curator of Costumes and Textiles at Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, Washington, D.C., and Professor of Theater Design at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.
Trish Donnally, award-winning former fashion editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, co-authored The New Traditional and The Collected Home with Darryl Carter. She has written extensively about style, design, architecture, and travel.
Nancy Rubin Stuart is an award-winning author and journalist. She is the author of American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post (1995).
Table of Contents
- Foreword by Kate Markert, Executive Director
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: An Age of Innocence and Independence 1903–1919
- Chapter 2: Glamorous Parties and All That Jazz 1920–1934
- Chapter 3: A Sartorial Success at Home and Abroad 1935–1954
- Chapter 4: A Grande Dame of Society and the End of an Era 1955–1973
- Makers Glossary
- Dress Terms
- Bibliography
- Index
