Sonia Delaunay: Fashion And Fabrics

Sonia Delaunay: Fashion and Fabrics

The Russian artist Sonia Delaunay, who with her husband Robert Delaunay was the leading light of the shot-lived Cubist splinter movement, Orphism, developed her own distinctive career after World War I. Between 1920 and 1930, she produced some striking and original fabric designs. Gloria Swanson and various French film stars, the unconventional socialite Nancy Cunard, and the wife of the Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer were all dressed by Delaunay. She designed interiors in collaboration with the Paris architect Mallet-Stevens and created costumes for the early films of Marcel L'Herbier; her fabrics were sold by the most exclusive department stores in the world; Jean Cocteau and Blaise Cendrars wrote about her fashion designs, and her decorated scarves are known to have had an influence on the work of Paul Klee.