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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jul 1

#textilecollector #textilecollection #fabriccollector #collectingvintage #patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory #designhistory #textiledesigner #americandesign #artistdesignedtextiles #modernism#midcenturymodern #moderndesign #patternonpattern #vintagestyle
#vintagefashion

Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jul 1

...or do you wait for an accumulation of goodies and then have a little cataloguing party?! What info do you capture in your process? Do you dx regularly? Do tell!

Which of these recent acquisitions (ready for their close ups📸) should I share first?!

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jul 1

Where my fellow textile collectors at? Informal poll: how do you manage your collection? Do you inventory everything using a spreadsheet? Or do you use a collection management database? Do you catalogue each one as it's acquired...

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jun 19

There are some nice examples from this collection at the @mfahouston 🍂🍃🍂

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#calisterthomas #designworksbedfordstuyvesant #patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory #designhistory #textiledesigner #ddandleslietillett #thetilletts #americandesign #blackdesign #blackdesigners

Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jun 19

This series of fabrics was not produced by DWBS, but by P. Kaufmann, who operated Woodco. Thomas had left DWBS by the debut of this "Benin Empire" collection, which she noted were inspired by a collection of 14th-century African sculptures in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jun 19

"I was very excited about the idea. It's hard enough to find a job anyway, especially if you're black, and the idea of doing this kind of work and with other black people really appealed to me. Here I can design anything the way I want. Here, I have real freedom."

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jun 19

A recent flea-market find: 'Hausa' by Calister Thomas for Woodco, 1 of 5 designed by her & copyrighted May 1972. Thomas had been working for a weaving company in Manhattan when dd & Leslie Tillett invited her to be chief designer for the Design Works of Bedford Stuyvesant in 1970. She was only 22!

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jun 18

Guess the repeat is on this one? Nearly six feet. Six feet!!! It's almost as if photographer Carl Van Vechten was placing human subjects next to Frank's work for scale. One of the most palampore-inspired Frank design, which is reason enough to love it.

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jun 18

Carmen de Lavallade (1️⃣2️⃣: dancer/choreographer/actor, 1955), Mattiwilda Dobbs (3️⃣: opera soprano, also 1955), and Chester B. Himes (4️⃣: author, 1962)...and 'Hawaii' by Josef Frank (5️⃣6️⃣7️⃣: designed for Svenkst Tenn while the Austrian-Swede was living in New York in 1943-45).

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jun 14

Lurex in ALLLLL the colors ✨🌈🧶

Possibly the best Lurex ad in "The Thread of the Story is #Lurex" campaign (American Fabrics mag, Spring 1959).

I am never not thinking about Lurex.

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#dorothyliebes #patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textilehistory #designhistory

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jun 10

I hear French girl summer is a thing…🍇🍋🍉🍐🍒

‘Left Bank’ by Greeff, c. 1950, my collection 🩵

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#frenchgirlsummer #picnic #piquenique #picnicchic #greeff #leftbank #patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory #designhistory #americandesign #noveltyprint #vintagenoveltyprint

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jun 6

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Jun 6

The swimsuit that went to war...by Cole of California, 1943-1945. In a range of colors and, yes, patterns, but it's tough not to choose "Parachute White" for D-Day...

🪂🤍

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#dday #coleofcalifornia #patriotic #americana #patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · May 24

And party clothes for Alexander Girard’s birthday today are provided by @gitmanvintage 🥳 who have released one of my favorite Girard designs, 'Cutouts’ (1954) in a brilliant (and true to the designer’s color sense) coral colorway...
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@girardstudio #alexandergirard #patternplayusa

Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · May 24

This ensemble appears in Women’s Wear Daily’s feature on the exhibition, and a Simpson advertisement in Vogue (April 1945) shows McCardell’s dress, accessorized with matching slip-on shoes. Dynasty/Pottery was prominently displayed in a “Museum Prints” advertisement in Vogue’s December 1945 issue.

Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · May 24

—was preceded by a color slide show of the fabrics used and the artworks from which the designs were derived. Wesley Simpson’s textiles comprised the second group shown; McCardell led with a halter-neck dress, followed by a playsuit with “umbrella-shaped shorts" under a sleeveless tunic coat.”

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · May 24

Claire McCardell of Townley Frocks, Inc. was the designer paired with Bemelmans’s print for two creations premiered in a “fashion promenade” for the in the central hall of the Morgan Wing on March 20, 1945. Each grouping of garments—five in total, encompassing 34 distinctive day and evening looks

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · May 24

Bemelmans’s original sketch for this pattern is also shown. Simpson asked Bemelmans to contribute designs based on Metropolitan Museum of Art artifacts, which where then shown in the museum's 1945 show, “American Fashions and Fabrics.”

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · May 24

specifically, a large buff-colored jar purchased from Egyptologist Howard Carter. It was produced on ribbed cotton and a drapey, slubbed rayon “shantung,” as is the green example (@coraginsburg) manufactured by the North-Carolina based Enka firm, which promoted its innovative synthetic fibers.

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · May 24

Claire McCardell's birthday deserves a special story, so let's invite #LudwigBemelmans (of Madeline fame) and #WesleySimpson (of art fabric fame) to the party! 🎉

Bemelmans’s Dynasty pattern (also called Pottery) is based on predynastic Egyptian pottery of the Late Naqada period (ca. 3500-3300 BCE)

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Reposted by Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA

Society of Architectural Historians @sah1365.bsky.social · May 2

SAH announces the winner of the 2025 Exhibition Catalogue Award:
Susan Brown and Alexa Griffith Winton
A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes
Yale University Press, 2023

Read more about this year's publication award winners: www.sah.org/programs/sah...

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Reposted by Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA

Yale University Press @yalepress.bsky.social · May 6

Congratulations! A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes, edited by Susan Brown & Alexa Griffith Winton and published in association with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has won the 2025 exhibition catalogue award from the Society of Architectural Historians.
#dorothyliebes

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · May 3

🌈🦓🌈🦓🌈🦓

Rainbow strié on cotton duck for #NationalTextileDay...a Tillett specialty, those hand pulled stripes-on-stripes. Enjoy the riiiiiiiiiiiiide!

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#patternplayusa #20thcenturydesign #textiledesign #textilehistory #designhistory #ddandleslietillett #thetilletts #textiledesigner #rainbow

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Leigh Wishner • Pattern Play USA @patternplayusa.bsky.social · Mar 26

Join me for this free virtual presentation! Register at link below.

🌈Dorothy Liebes: Modern Fashion’s Starchitect

📅 Tuesday, April 1

⏰6:00-7:00pm CDT

Presented by Leigh Wishner
www.patternplayusa.com

www.mononaterrace.com/event-group/...

Model wearing a skirt from the Dorothy Liebes/Bonnie Cashin Skirtings Collection, standing in front of the Liebes-designed theater curtain for the American Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair, 1958; Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

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