Fashion & Interiors: A Gendered Affair

Exploring fashion and interior design through a gender lens, from the Victorian era to contemporary designers like Martin Margiela and Raf Simons

Fashion & Interiors. A Gendered Affair explores the relationship between fashion and interiors from a gender perspective.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, bourgeois ladies embellished both their bodies and their homes with drapes, fringing and ruches. Male designers such as Henry van de Velde and Josef Hoffmann waged war on that decorative excess and designed women’s clothing and interiors as part of a well-thought-out total work of art. Fashion designers Paul Poiret and Jeanne Lanvin drew inspiration from this approach and used interior design to create a powerful brand for their fashion houses. The impact of clothing also resonated with modernist (interior) architects such as Adolf Loos, Lilly Reich and Le Corbusier.

This complex history is reflected in surprising ways in the visual language and creations of contemporary fashion designers such as Ann Demeulemeester, Martin Margiela, and Raf Simons.

Romy Cockx is curator of MoMu / Fashion Museum Antwerp. She studied history at the University of Antwerp and worked as project officer for the Archive Centre for Women’s History and as curator for Fashion Museum Hasselt. From 2014 to 2019, she was curator of diamond museum DIVA, where she curated two ’Wonder Rooms’ in collaboration with Axel Vervoordt and Wouters&Hendrix in addition to the collection presentation. Robin Schuldenfrei’s research and teaching focuses on the history and theory of European and American modern architecture and design. She received her doctorate from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and previously held positions at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Lara Steinhäußer is Curator, textiles and carpets collection at the MAK in Vienna.