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Fitting Rooms: The Dress Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright

culture's expectations of eccentric behavior from people like Wright who are acknowledged as creative geniuses. The theory that the dresses are manifestations of Wright's desire for unity is one that I believe to be essentially correct although not fully articulated. The dresses can be interpreted not only within the context of Wright's work and personal history but also in relation to turn-of-the-century discourses on fashion, dress reform, feminism, and interior design. Examination of the cut and color of the dresses in light of contemporaneous writings on costume and design by Wright and others makes it clear that the dresses can reveal attitudes that were commonly held at the time about women's place in society. Due in part to an absence of scholarship on the subject of clothing designed by architects, the difficulty of a study of these particular dresses is exacerbated by the fact that none seem to have survived. Analysis is therefore based on a small collection of photographs at the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation and the State University of New York-Buffalo archives and recollections of the garments written by Wright's family members and by Wright himself. Seven photographs show four different dresses that are believed to have been designed by Wright between 1 89o and 191 o. The dates of the construction of the garments are estimates, but two are attributed to 1890-1900 by Frank's son David Wright (1895) and one to 1900oo-1910o by Hanks.2 The last dress appears in a photograph dated 190o8. Wright therefore may have been designing clothing during at least a ten-year period. That Carma R. Gorman is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. The author thanks professors Margaretta Lovell and Paul Groth and the members of the Berkeley Americanist Group for their criticism and encouragement at all stages of this project. A departmental travel grant and a Humanities Graduate Research Grant from the University of California, Berkeley made research in Chicago and Oak Park possible. Mary Ann Porucznik of the Oak Park Nineteenth Century Woman's Club graciously volunteered to search for information regarding the Wrights' involvement with that organization. And the author is especially indebted to Eric J. Peterson, who provided support and wise counsel during three years of research and writing. 1 David Hanks, The Decorative Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979), P. 24.