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MaryMcFadden 1970 TheMetCollected JewelrySeries Gilt Openwork Sculptural Brooch

Name: MaryMcFadden 1970 TheMetCollected JewelrySeries Gilt Openwork Sculptural Brooch
Brand: Mary McFadden
Price: 960 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Like Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Hattie Carnegie, and Pauline Trigere, Mary McFadden produced jewelry in the 20th Century to compliment her own couture-clothing designs. Unlike those fashion designers, McFadden handcrafted her sculptural jewelry, whereby her studio designs in brass since the 1970s contributed to defining the art-to-wear movement. The Costume Institute of TheMet museum, which has collected dozens of her distinct jewelry and clothing creations through the 1990s, acquired the earliest piece of jewelry attributed to McFadden (b.1938), which is a 1970 bold openwork golden metal necklace (see our photo) in the same abstract organic pattern as this signed yellow-gold-gilt brass brooch with her copyright "Mary McFadden". McFadden's minimalist golden jewelry was characterized by the enlargement of a classic motif with the intent to add texture and shine to her pattern-upon-pattern clothing ensembles, like this open-work brooch that resembles a leaf or wing depending on its position. As McFadden did not launch her U.S.-based fashion company until 1976, the namesake copyright use on this brooch suggests that it was an early limited edition of the open-work series most likely for a high-end U.S. retailer that would later showcase her couture collections, such as Henri Bendel, Bergdorf Goodman or Neiman Marcus. Since the late-1970s when she won several coveted Coty awards, McFadden was best known for her elegant columnar-silhouette clothing and patented permanently-pleated fabric designs, which were greatly inspired by ancient Egyptian, Greek, Japanese and African cultures--not unlike Coco Chanel's interest in re-envisioning international artifacts. Prior to establishing Mary McFadden Inc, McFadden began to design hand-painted silk tunics and jewelry for herself, while writing for Vogue as a foreign editor after she had moved to South Africa with her first husband, who was a diamond-producer for De Beers. After a divorce, she returned to her birthplace New York in 1970 while continuing to write for Vogue, where her colleagues and couture collectors urged her to reproduce her designs as a business. Early in the 1960s, she became known in influential fashion circles for her public-relations role at Christian Dior. Respected throughout the fashion industry after she became an award-winning designer, McFadden acted as the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America from 1982-1983. Notably, as a longtime resident of New York City and frequent name among the world's best-dressed lists, the New York Landmarks Conservancy named her its first "Living Landmark." For lots more information about her, read her 2012-published book, Mary McFadden: A Lifetime of Design, Collecting, and Adventure. Please note that this signed namesake copyright brooch is not among the jewelry designs that she licensed to third-parties, such as The Franklin Mint which used its own copyright signed "FM". Therefore, this early rare design is priced higher.

Creator:

Mary McFadden

Metal:

Gold,Gilt Metal,Brass

Weight:

16 g

Dimensions:

Width: 1.25 in (31.75 mm)Depth: 0.5 in (12.7 mm)Length: 4 in (101.6 mm)

Style:

Modern

Place of Origin:

United States

Period:

1970-1979

Date of Manufacture:

1970

Condition:

Wear consistent with age and use.

Seller Location:

Chicago, IL

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU3244218623382

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Shop All Mary McFadden

Mary McFadden

Less could have been expected from a well-bred society girl like Mary McFadden, who stepped out of the safe confines of the haut monde to create iconic designs for evening dresses, jackets, skirts and other items inspired by ancient and ethnic cultures and traditions. Fashion, in fact, was not initially on her agenda.

“I fell into it backwards,” she told the New York Times in 1979.

Born in New York but raised on a cotton plantation in Memphis, Tennessee, McFadden spent a few months at the Traphagen School of Fashion in 1956 and moved on to study sociology and anthropology at Columbia University. Afterward, she spent a short period of time in public relations at Christian Dior during the early 1960s, but she was unsure exactly what would lie ahead for her. McFadden decided to relocate to South Africa with her first husband, who oversaw production of the De Beers mines. While there, she began to design her own clothing — tunics that featured African prints, made of silk she’d found in Madagascar — because she couldn’t find anything that suited her.

In 1970, following two divorces, McFadden returned to her native New York City and was offered a job as an editor at Vogue magazine. Her colleagues admired the sophisticated garments she made in South Africa and had been wearing to work, and the magazine staffers pleaded to feature her designs, which meant she’d need to go into business in order to make them available to readers. So, in 1973, McFadden took the jump, soon becoming known for refreshing kimono-shaped jackets and richly colored pleated dresses that evoke the freedom of a Greek chiton — a far cry from the dull routine office attire for working women at the time. A collection of jewelry followed, and in 1977, McFadden patented her “marii” fabric, a pleated synthetic charmeuse that fell “like liquid gold on the body, like Chinese silk.”

In 1976, McFadden won her first Coty American Fashion Critics’ Award, and a few years later, she entered the Coty Award Hall of Fame. While her business shuttered in the early 2000s, the beloved designer’s timeless styles endure.

Shop vintage Mary McFadden day dresses, accessories and jewelry on 1stDibs today.