4. Fashion and Interior Decoration

“...Since the late nineteenth century, interior decoration as well as fashion has been used as a means to control and enforce a normative gender or sexuality as well as a way to accommodate and fashion an alternative sexuality....”

The creation of gender and sexuality has always been linked to larger social and cultural power relations. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one segment of society attempted to enforce normative heterosexual genders and sexualities, while another reacted against them to fashion an alternative sexuality. Modernist interior design and fashion was employed as a means to control and shape early twentieth century genders and sexualities. Artists such as Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, for example, used fashion and interior design as a means to enforce normative genders and sexualities, while Eileen Gray and Romaine Brooks used interior design and fashion to accommodate an alternative, non-heterosexual femininity.

Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier contested the common practices of architecture and fashion that used decoration or ornamentation because they defined and associated them with degeneration, femininity and non-heterosexuality (Wigley 1995). In their view, the removal of decoration and ornamentation from fashion and interior design would work to enforce normative genders and sexualities and would reinforce a heterosexual, masculine, individual. In order to understand why Loos and Le Corbusier were against decoration and ornamentation, it is necessary to first consider Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic movement and the fear that it invoked.

The Aesthetic movement was characterized by the phrase ‘art for arts sake.’ According to proponents of the movement, art should be concerned with beauty, passion and sensation, and aesthetics should be valued over ethics. “To discern the beauty of a thing is the finest point to which [artists] could arrive” (Gere 13-14). Take Oscar’s Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray from 1891, which provides a good example to illustrate the characteristics of the Aesthetic movement. The novel tells the story of Dorian Gray who becomes the subject matter of a painting done by the artist Basil Hallward. Through the guidance of Lord Henry, Dorian begins to believe that beauty in life is the only thing worth pursuing, leading him to become obsessed with his own beauty and youth. Influences of the Aesthetic movement which are alluded to in The Picture of Dorian Gray include  decorative Oriental Japonisme, exotic materials, blue and white china, marble and gilt tables as well as brightly coloured peacock feather motifs. All decoration was (supposedly) exquisitely tasteful, beautiful and perfect.

Oscar Wilde was the proclaimed leader of the Aesthetic movement (Gere 11), which had a significant impact on his fashion and lifestyle. By adopting a 'dandy' style of dress he was able to perform an alternative sexuality, that is, homosexuality. The dandy style of dress was similar to the dress of the aristocracy in that they wore long jackets, top hats and white gloves and they spent many hours in front of the mirror perfecting their image. Dandyism was an attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty. This dandy lifestyle would later be the cause of Wilde’s imprisonment for indecency, essentially for being homosexual. All the qualities that had been associated with the Aesthetic movement, such as ornamental surfaces and dandy fashion, were thus associated with homosexuality, which led to the removal of decoration from interior designs and fashion by twentieth century artists attempting to enforce heterosexual norms.

Loos considered decorative ornamentation to be a wasteful crime (169). He saw it as a waste of human labor, time, money and materials. Decoration was seen as a symbol of backwardness and degeneracy and Loos proclaimed, “a person of our times who gives way to the urge to daub the walls with erotic symbols is an animal or a degenerate” (167). Loos also categorized decorative art, including trinkets, ornaments, handmade objects and the oriental, as trash and associated these objects with homosexuality. He suggested that the removal of ornamentation would rid society of degeneracy and crime. However in reality, Loos used the removal of ornamentation from the interior as a way to control the sexual inhabitant and to help enforce the creation of a masculine heterosexual rather than a homosexual.

Like Loos, Le Corbusier also defined ornamentation as inexpensive, commonplace trash that was brightly coloured or gilded. He condemned objects that had ornate decoration and praised those without it. Ornamentation was seen as a perversion that acted as a mask or disguise that distracted individuals from seeing the true nature of the object (Wigley 217). Le Corbusier’s definition of decoration and ornamentation suggested that his non-decorative interiors strove to enforce and create normative genders and sexualities. Though he never fully described the type of gender and sexuality his interiors were attempting to create, Le Corbusier was arguably attempting to reinforce a masculine and heterosexual identity. He wrote that,

[decoration] could be as charming, as gay, and as shop-girl-like as you could want but this surface elaboration, if extended without discernment over absolutely everything, becomes repugnant and scandalous, it smells of pretence, and the healthy gaiety of the shop girl in her flowered-patterned cretonne dress, becomes rank corruption (Le Corbusier 89).

He also suggested that decoration was associated with the savage and uncultivated person (Le Corbusier 85). In essence, decoration had become associated with the feminine, the uncultivated savage, the homosexual, and the degenerate. Thus, for Le Corbusier, the removal of decoration from the interior created a more rational and reassuring work environment, that resembled a healthy, modern factory. Masculinity and heterosexuality came to be associated with the clear, healthy and rational, while femininity and non-heterosexuality came to be associated with the perverse and the corrupt, in turn deemed indecent.

Le Corbusier’s alternative to decoration  was a Coat of Whitewash, The Law of Ripolin, which stated that “every citizen is required to replace his hangings, his damasks, his wall-papers, his stencils, with a plain white coat of ripolin. His home is made clean… Everything is shown as it is. Then comes inner cleanness” (Le Corbusier 188). By removing the layer of decoration and replacing it with a white coat of paint, Le Corbusier suggested that people would act in a manner considered more appropriate, and in turn they would become the 'masters' of their houses and of themselves (Le Corbusier 188). The white wall forced people to be precise, accurate and to think clearly. “The white of whitewash is absolute, everything stands out from it and everything is recorded absolutely, black or white; it is honest and dependable… [and] is extremely moral,” he noted (Le Corbusier 190).

Mark Wigley’s (1995) article “The Emperor’s New Paint” clarifies the intentions of Le Corbusier’s white wall. The white wall was a form of purification for the eye or the subject of the house, rather than the house itself. It was used as a means to discourage any perverse actions or thoughts and replaced the degenerate layer of decoration with a clean, pure wall -- anything 'degenerate' would stand out against the whiteness of the walls. Wigley suggests that the white wall was a means to cover up what lay beneath it, and a way to force people into seeing what the architect wanted them to see. Many of the terms that Le Corbusier used to define the white wall were also used in the twentieth century to define the heterosexual male, among them pure, appropriate, master, honest, dependable and moral. By contrast, the words used to describe decoration were also used to described the non-heterosexual, such as degenerate, untruthful and unintelligent. Taking this into consideration, it could be said that the white wall and the removal of decoration was a denial that there was ever decoration. Moreover, this was also an attempt to deny homosexuality and create heterosexual individuals. The ability of the white wall to 'purify' the subject and remove any perverse thoughts from their mind also suggested that it was able to 'cure' homosexuality and enforce normative sexualities.

Much like interior design, fashion was also used to control and enforce male heterosexuality. Modern fashion reacted against the highly decorative aesthetic costume and promoted the pure white garment. The decorative style of clothing was first linked to the female dress, but it soon came to be associated with Wilde and the decadent period, and by extension with homosexuality. Males who dressed in decorative, dandy costumes were seen as less masculine and more feminine. Therefore, following Loos and Le Corbusier, decorative clothing must be eliminated to control the sexuality of the individual wearing the clothes and the white garment was introduced as a solution (Wigley 220). The white garment stood for many of the same things that the white wall stood for, such as purity, cleanliness and hygiene. The rejection of a degenerate style of fashion could be seen as society’s way of promoting heterosexuality.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century there was an emergence of female artists and interior decorators. While it was generally unacceptable for women to have paid jobs in the public domain, interior decoration was considered to be appropriate because it placed women back into the domestic sphere. However, by placing women back in the home, gender norms were once again controlled and enforced.

The inter-war period witnessed a realignment of gendered labour within consumer capitalism -- the gendereding of the ‘home’ sanctioned interior decoration as a career for women. The close connection between decoration and the home allowed for interior decoration to be promoted as a feminine pastime for middle-class women, which it had been since the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The link to domesticity sanitized women’s involvement in business and the public sphere (McNeil 637).

Peter McNeil argues that interior decorating was seen as an extension of a woman’s intuition; the model of sensual, colour-hungry femininity, which was the opposite to the rational male (652). This definition attempts to promote the forced return of women into the interior, home space. The intuitive woman was forced to stay in the domestic sphere to decorate, cook, clean and tend to the children, while the rational male claimed jobs in the public sphere to provide money in order to support the family. The enforcement of these gender norms meant that women were once again subordinate to men. Placing women back in the home also prevented the corruption of the woman, which was believed to occur as a result of their involvement in the public sphere. Defining interior decoration as an appropriate job for women also helped remove the homosexual male interior decorator from the profession, something that had emerged during the decadent period. Therefore, by labeling interior decoration as a female profession rather than a homosexual profession, the accepted gender norms were further enforced.

Even though aligning interior decoration with the feminine was an attempt to control and enforce normative gender roles and sexualities, the rise of female artists, painters, architects and interior decorators allowed for a ‘new woman’ to emerge. The ‘new woman’ used fashion and interior design to diverge from the constraints of normative sexualities and strove to create an alternative sexuality. Romaine Brooks and Eileen Gray were two of many artists that emerged out of this period and who attempted to accommodate a new sexuality. While Brooks created a space and a name for non-heterosexual women, Gray eliminated gendered spaces all together in order to create a location that was neither bound by feminization or masculinization. Both Brooks’ and Gray’s approaches to interior design, fashion, sexuality and gender rejected Adolf Loos’ and Le Corbusier’s efforts to enforce and create a heterosexual masculine social body that fit into modernist ideals. In order to accommodate or fashion a new alternative sexuality Brooks and Gray used characteristics that were common in the decadent period, but combined them with modernist characteristics. By appropriating decadent qualities, Brooks and Gray suggested that they were not working within the boundaries of normative sexualities. However, despite the fact that they pushed the boundaries of traditional gender norms, they were not considered transgressive (as were the decadent artists), as they incorporated modernist qualities into their work. By combining characteristics of the decadent movement, which was associated with aristocratic taste and sexual deviance, with the modernist movement, which was defined as hygienic and forward thinking, a new elite class and taste emerged, which was non- heterosexual yet acceptable.

Brooks was an important modernist artist and through her fashion and artwork she attempted to accommodate an alternative non-normative sexuality by representing the upper echelons of Paris’s cosmopolitan lesbian society in a decadent, yet modernist way (Latimer 44). The figure of Oscar Wilde and the decadent period was influential for Brooks and the artwork she produced. The decadent characteristics that she appropriated and incorporated into her fashion and painting included the dandy style of dress, which influenced her own choice of costume as well as that of the cross-dressed sitters she chose to paint (Elliot and Wallace 33). While Wilde and decadent dandies used costumes to create an image for male homosexuals, Brooks used it in a different way to suggest a new sexuality for females. Brooks also borrowed the decadent colour palate of grey, black and white, then seen to represent decay and corruption. By adopting Wildean and decadent costume and colour palate, Brooks was deliberately making her alternative sexuality visible (Elliot and Wallace 51). In other words, by “recycling images, voices, and costumes in the interest of creating a newly visible and deviant sexuality within the confines of an elitist and umproblematized social position” Brooks was able to create a new acceptable alternative sexuality, as well as a way for other non-heterosexual females to recognize one another (Elliot and Wallace 54).

The analysis of Brook’s Self Portrait of 1923 provides an example of how she appropriated and modified nineteenth decadent qualities while working within the boundaries of modernism. Self Portrait used a decadent colour palate of dark greys, blacks and whites. These specific colours “seduced the viewer not with innocence and charm but with a more powerful allure, dark and decadent… serious, severe [and] bitter qualities more typically associated with masculinity” (Latmier 49). By depicting herself as a more masculine painter she was able to break away from the constraints that were placed upon female artists and help erode the typical conventions of how women should be represented in paintings. Previously, women artists were oftn seen as amateurs and innately inferior and were represented in paintings as decorative objects with an emphasis on fashion, and surfaces (Latimer 49). Brooks on the other hand painted Self Portrait to represent her unconscious essence and to show a lesbian revision of a dandy aestheticism.

By placing herself in the transitional space between the interior of the house and the balcony, dominating the city below her, Brooks blurs the boundaries of acceptable normative genders. She can be seen as a flâneur subject who is identified with the city rather than sheltered away from it. Brooks’ identification with the city was perceived as a potential threat to acceptable gender norms because it was believed that the city was not only one of the causes of gender transgressions within women, but it was also feared that women would take over jobs in the public sphere.

Another influential decadent characteristic that Brooks appropriated for her Self Portrait was the dandy style of costume. Like Wilde and many other dandies, Brooks depicted herself wearing a long tailored jacket, a top hat that covered her 'feminine' eyes and one glove -- all of which identified her not only as a dandy, but as a masculinized subject as well. Even though her costume suggests a masculine identity, her bright red lipstick was a clear indication that she was female. Brooks’ ambiguous fashion in this painting allowed for her create an alternative sexuality because she was represented as both female and male. Also, because she was an upper class citizen working within the constraints of modernism, this new alternative sexuality that she was accommodating provoked little negative commentary (Latimer 63).

Like Brooks, Eileen Gray was also categorized as a ‘new woman’ artist who used interior decoration as well as architecture to fashion an alternative sexuality that was neither feminine nor masculine. Gray did not want to see gender play any role in interior decoration because that would emphasis that there was a difference between the genders, causing one to become inferior to the other (Elliot 178). In order to eliminate any associations with gender in her interiors, Gray removed the conventional gendered spaces, which were typical in Le Corbusier’s houses. There was no longer a masculinized study off the dining room or a feminized boudoir off the bedroom (Constant 273). Gray’s interiors were instead created to conform to an individualistic existence and the aspirations of one’s sensibility. Therefore, if Gray was designing an interior to accommodate a specific individual, the ideal individual would not be interested in fitting into the constraints of a normative gender. The spaces were not confined to the definitive feminine nor masculine form, instead focused on the alternative subject. Gray’s furniture design also suggested that she was creating an interior space that was free from normative gender constraints. Most of the furniture incorporated into her interior space could be adjusted to accommodate all subjects within the space. In doing so, a non-gendered alternative emerged.

Eileen Gray designed E.1027 from 1926 to 1929 for her lover Jean Badovici, and she took responsibility for both the design and the construction of the house. E.1027 is an example of how Gray utilized decadent and modernist qualities in her interiors in order to fashion an alternative non-gendered subject. While the house looked especially modernist, decadent influences could be found in her handcrafted rugs. Gray attempted to combine modernist synthetic materials with natural materials and in turn merged hand-craftsmanship with aspects of machine production (Constant 266). Further, the words invitation au voyage were inscribed in E.1027 over a nautical chart of the Caribbean. Invitation au Voyage was a prose poem by the decadent poet Charles Baudelaire. “Much like the imaginary country that Charles Baudelaire conjured up in his prose poem, L’invitation au voyage… one could say of her architecture, it is there we must go to breathe, to dream, and to prolong the hours in an infinity of sensations,” writes Caroline Constant (277-78). By incorporating the decadent poem into E.1027, Gray further separated her house from Le Corbusier’s machine-made heterosexual dwellings, for one could not dream or dare to be anything but normative in his homes. Therefore, a decadent influence allowed her to fashion an alternative subject that was free from the constraints of femininity and masculinity.

The modernist qualities of E.1027 aimed to help the alternative subject to be accepted by society. The modernist qualities are referenced through her use of Le Corbusier’s Five Points of a New Architecture, including the incorporation of a roof garden, a free plan, open concept rooms, strip windows and pilotis. However, in order to create an interior that was unlike Le Corbusier’s standardized, heterosexual interiors, Gray eliminated gender specific rooms. The rooms in E.1027 took on a plurality of use and “each room [took] on attributes of an entire dwelling” (Constant 272). She also used adjustable lights, tables, mirrors and chairs in E.1027 as a way to accommodate her alternative non-gendered subject.

Eileen Gray envisioned E.1027 as a house that would help accommodate or fashion an alternative sexuality that was free from the constraints of femininity and masculinity. However, when Le Corbusier defaced the walls of the house with obscene images of naked women, he was effaced Gray's sexuality as well (Colomina 178). The numerous graffiti murals on her walls can be seen as another way for Le Corbusier, or more specifically, the masculine subject, to enforce normative genders and sexualities. Gray’s sexuality was no secret for she was openly gay and Le Corbusier’s mural, which he completed in 1938 titled Graffite a Cap Martin (Three Women) can be read as a critique of Gray’s lesbianism. The three women represented Jean Badovici on the right, Gray on the left and their desired child, which was never born, was in the middle (Colomina 178). The mural suggests that Le Corbusier was against non-heterosexual relationships because a gay couple would be unable to reproduce, making them 'useless' to society. If this were the case, the only acceptable sexuality would have to be heterosexuality. The mural could also be defined as a way for Le Corbusier to colonize and repress Gray’s alternative sexuality and repress Gray’s desire to accommodate an alternative sexuality within E.1027. It was an assertion of masculinity over femininity and this “concern for male agency and its desire to contain the feminine tend[ed] to overshadow any independent attention to Gray’s work” (Lavin 184). Despite the fact that E.1027 currently is deteriorating, Le Corbusier’s murals remain intact, proving that not only has he defaced the house and effaced Gray's sexuality, but he has effaced her reputation as an architect as well. E.1027 has been attributed to both Le Corbusier and Jean Badovici, which suggests that it is unacceptable for a well-built house to be attributed to a non-heterosexual woman. Through the defacement of E.1027, the masculine figure once again attempted to control and enforce a normative sexuality by effacing an alternative sexuality.

Works Cited

Colomina, Beatriz. “Battle Lines: E.1027.” The Sex of Architecture. Eds. Diana Agrest, Patricia Conway and Leslie Kanes Weisman, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996, pp. 167-182.

Constant, Caroline. “E.1027: The Nonheroic Modernism of Eileen Gray.” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 53.3 (September 1994), pp. 265-279.

Elliot, Bridget. “Housing the Work: Women Artists, Modernism and the maison d’artiste: Eileen Gray, Romaine Brooks and Gluck.” Women Artists and the Decorative Arts 1880-1935: The Gender of Ornament. Eds. Bridget Elliot and Janice Helland, Aldershot, England; Burlington: Ashgate, 2002, pp. 176-196.

Elliot, Bridget and Wallace, Jo-Ann. “Fleurs du Mal or Second Hand Roses?” Women Artists and Writers: Moder (Im)positionings. New York: Routledge, 1994, pp. 31-55.

Gere, Charlotte. The House Beautiful: Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic Interior. London: Lund Humphries, Geffrye Museum, 2000, pp. 11-32.

Latimer, Tirza True. “Romaine Brooks: Portraits That Look Back.” Women Together/Women Apart. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005, pp. 43-67.

Lavin, Sylvia. “Colomina’s Web: Reply to Beatriz Colomina.” The Sex of Architecture. Eds. Diana Agrest, Patricia Conway and Leslie Kanes Weisman, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996, pp. 183-190.

Le Corbusier. The Decorative Art of Today [1925]. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 198, pp. 82-100, 185-192.

Loos, Adolf.  “Orament and Crime.” Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays. Ed. Michael Mitchell,  Riverside California: Ariadne Press, 1908, pp. 167-176.

McNeil, Peter. “Designing Women, Gender, Sexuality and the Interior Decorator, c.1890-1940” Art History 17.4 (December 1994), pp. 631-657.

Wigley, Mark. “The Emperor’s New Paint.” White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture.Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1995, pp. 2-33.

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