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Modern Master: Lucien Lelong, 1918-48

Start Date 28 February 2006
End Date 15 April 2006
Venue Museum at FIT
Location New York, USA
Curator Sarah Scaturro and Sonya Mooney
Designer Fashion and Textile: History, Theory, and Museum Practice MA students
A display case of accessories sit beneath a row of monochrome photographs.
A row of dresses on white mannequins stand on display.

This exhibition was the first exhibition to explore Lucien Lelong’s impact on fashion and was organized by graduate students in FIT’s Master of Arts program in Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory and Museum Practice. The exhibition highlighted Lelong’s modernist design sensibility, his business acumen through his creation of ready-to-wear and perfume lines, his role in saving French haute couture during the Second World War as the president of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, his marriage to his muse, Natalie Paley, and the end of his house after the departure of two young designers he had hired, Pierre Balmain and Christian Dior.