A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes

Over a four-decade career, Dorothy Liebes (1897-1972) developed and popularized a distinctively American form of mid-century design—one that combined industrial materials with handcraft and brilliant color. Few people wielded as much influence over the textures and colors of modern architectural interiors; she also shaped the design landscape across a swath of other disciplines, including transportation, industrial design, fashion, and film.

Liebes began her career creating luxurious custom fabrics for the most prominent architects and interior designers of the period, but she believed that industrial production assured the greatest possible access to quality design, and that handcraft had a role to play. In the 1950s she gave up custom fabrics production to focus on creating handwoven samples for interpretation on industrial looms. Her studio became a laboratory for design, exploring the capabilities of new, synthetic materials. The “Liebes Look”—nubby handwoven textures with saturated colors and sparkling metallics—penetrated every market and every price point, and can still be felt in interior and fashion fabrics today.

Through her television and radio appearances and near-constant presence in shelter and women’s magazines, Liebes had an outsized influence on how many Americans experienced modernism, yet her powerful impact on 20th century design remains largely unacknowledged. Her story is essential and adds a new thread to the story of mid-century modernism.