Apr 16, 2025 | 1950s, 2010s, reaction paper, Week 3
Summary: Unlike the field of architecture, which celebrated a masculine approach, Elise de Wolfe brought the feminine frame of mind to interior design and thus helped create an environment that recognizes feminine desires and needs in spaces. Elsie de Wolfe’s contributions to interior design and ‘feminine spaces’ are intrinsically attached to her and her female clients’ identities. de Wolfe’s identity as a woman, and more specifically as a queer woman, as well as her high economic status, contributed to the context of her designs. While de Wolfe was not designing for people of color and lower-class individuals, she was a person who was more intuned to the feminine perspective in the early 20th century, compared to male architects. Being more apt to listen to the whims and desires of her female clients, she designs for them, rather than around them. While there was an aesthetic throughline in many of de Wolfe’s designs, she most importantly understood that she was designing for individual women. Their personalities and wants from the interiors of their homes shone through, displaying varying levels of fashion, function, and character.
Application: The concept of individuality and femininity in interior design still persists. While interior design is not inherently feminine, interior designers such as Janet Gregg in her Charleston home continue to infuse their spaces with pieces of themselves, celebrating certain historically favored styles by women. Janet Gregg is a talented female interior designer who has made her smaller home in Charleston a haven for herself and her guests. Gregg, much like de Wolfe, infuses aspects of herself and her personality into her work and the spaces she creates. Her patterns are wild and fun, and when looking at photos of her home, the longer you look, the more you discover. Her style is expressive and inherently feminine because of the historical backing, pops of color, animal prints, or floral are traditionally known to many people to be styles women lean towards over men. However, while femininity is inherent to Greggs’ style, it is not at the forefront. Instead, she states that the story a piece of furniture can tell is the most important element to curating her space.
Figure 1. Image of Interior Designer, Janet Gregg’s, living room full of expressive and unique pieces.
House Beautiful, July 2015 Written by Barbara King
De Wolfe had revolutionized the concept of personalizing space and making spaces tell a story about the people or, most commonly, the women who lived there. This focus on women making their home more in tune with themselves could also be seen in 1950 in an ad for Tomlinson furniture. The ad speaks about how to furnish your home, and through furniture, “How to Personalize Color.” With women doing the majority of shopping and browsing magazines like House Beautiful, it can be noted that an ad such as this one is attempting to cater to and talk to women and appeal to the desire to show off their personality in their home.
Figure 2. Advertisement for Tomlinson furniture and a guide “How to Personalize Color” aimed at a female clientele
House Beautiful, March 1950, pg. 3
Apr 16, 2025 | reaction paper, Week 3
Reading Summary:
In Chapter 3 of “Elsie de Wolfe and her Female Clients” by Penny Sparke, we explore the intersectionality between class and gender expectations in the 20th century, constructed by Elsie de Wolfe’s interior decoration. According to Parke, Wolfe helped shape the field into a professional domain where women could assert influence and taste in a socially acceptable way. By challenging the dark and heavy Victorian norms with lighter and more modern styles, Wolfe helped create a new identity for upper-class women. Because of these wealthy women, interior decoration became legitimized as a professional and gendered practice.
Sparke argues that de Wolfe’s success was made possible by the relationship between women and the household, which historically had been seen as a natural extension of femininity. Rather than contesting this association, de Wolfe took advantage of it; she created a legitimate and respectable profession for herself and other women. She framed her decorative work as both practical and moral, helping upper-class women to create homes that reflected their social values.
At the time, interior decoration was not recognized as a solemn profession. Instead, it was considered more of a hobby or an extension of housework. The house was the woman’s, and the man was forever a guest. De Wolfe helped it be recognized as a profession, using her elite social connections and public persona to blend taste with authority. Sparke shows that this process of professionalization was closely tied to class privilege, as de Wolfe’s clients were highly wealthy, white, upper-class women who could afford to turn their homes into reflections of modern taste, refinement, and dreams.
Application:
Historical Case: Interior Decoration is a Female-dominated profession
Figure 1. A print advertisement for a built-in vacuum cleaning system, using a woman as the model and primary user. House Beautiful, January 1922, page 75. “Spencer. Central Cleaning System. ‘Keeps a House Clean.’“
Figure 2. Architects Yvonne Farrel and Shelley McNamara, after winning a Pritzker Prize. House Beautiful, March 03, 2020. “Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara.“
Historically, women were only seen in advertisements modeling for products related to cleaning, home goods, or decorating, but only as a pass-time. Meanwhile, men were seen in images working on houses, cars, or other related activities. With the help of de Wolfe and other social evolutions/progressions, women have become more recognized in the design field. Not just as interior decorators, but as architects as well, seen in Figure 2, which celebrates the accomplishment of two female architects winning a Pritzker Prize, a prize known to be historically sexist. However, as we move onto case number two, it is important to know that this field is still associated with the upper-class.
Contemporary Case: Can only the wealthy achieve beauty?
Figure 3. An example of how most of the houses in this magazine are large, luxurious, and “exotic”: that was the standard definition of beauty and ideal. House Beautiful, January 1922, pages 35.
Figure 4. House Beautiful Website screenshot as of April 15, 2025, from their ‘Inspiration’ page. House Beautiful Website, Decoration page.
Of course, beauty is subjective. However, there have been countless debates about the norms of beauty and what it means for something to be beautiful. The design field is no stranger to these arguments. House Beautiful, architects, and other publications have, throughout time, publicized their ideas of attractiveness, ultimately creating a near universal agreement of beauty that can only be achieved if you are wealthy enough.
Apr 10, 2025 | 1920s, 1940s, 1960s, 1980s, 2010s, Uncategorized, week 2
Topic: How have women been portrayed in home advertisements over time?
Description: This topic looks at how women have been portrayed in advertisements specifically related to the home.
Hypothesis: Over several decades, women have continued to be advertised as the primary target for home products and are depicted as the homemaker.
Explanation: Looking at House Beautiful magazine beginning in the 1920s, women are shown in ads that display new innovations for the home and are catered towards in terms of writing. In general, because of gender norms, women. more so than men, have been associated with the home.
- The ad from 1921 for a vacuum depicts a women cleaning the furniture in her house. The copy on this isn’t specifically about women, but the imagery itself shows who this product was made for.
- The ad from 1941 is explicitly targeting women, as a “red head” is shown and the text compares a living room to wearing a new dress that compliments her. This is an ad for the “Colorama Selector,” but the selecting of the colors in the house is clearly the role of the woman.
- The ad from 1961 is for a garage door opener, but the main photo and caption line is about women and children. The product targets women and also “men with trick backs” because it is probably too much of a hassle for those groups to open the garage door themselves.
- The ad from 1981 is for a washer and it depicts a woman as the main target user. She is said to spend “15,625 hours of her life doing the laundry,” because women were depicted as and oftentimes the homemakers, even in the 1980s when gender norms had advanced from before.
- The image from 2010 depicts and interior designer that was interviewed about creating a room. This one isn’t an advertisement, but it shows how women are still the majority in the interior design field, even though gender norms have progressed even more and women aren’t always seen as homemakers.
House Beautiful 1921, vol. 50, pg. 67
Original Caption: “Clean with a Spencer. More than just Floors– Everything in the room collects dust. And with the SPENCER you are ‘Master of the Situation.” SPENCER hose and implements are handy and light. SPENCER speed and thoroughness are revelations. The SPENCER is a sanitary, built-in vacuum cleaning system. Pipes all dust and dirt to an enclosed receptacle in your basement. Nothing escapes!”
House Beautiful 1941, vol. 83, pg. 63
Original Caption: “This is a red-head’s room. She doesn’t just sit in it. She ‘wears’ it as she would a particularly becoming dress, her favorite hat. And she knows it does things for her- because she ‘tried it on’ before she bought it.”
House Beautiful 1961, vol. 103, pg. 17
Original Caption: “Ladies with babies love Delco-matic Garage Door Operators. And so do men with trick backs. People all dressed for parties. Women with pretty new hats or hair-dos. And you will, too. Because, with a Delco-matic, you can just touch a button on your car’s dashboard and your garage door opens ‘all by itself!’ No more getting out of your car on cold or dark or rainy nights. For Delco-matic works night and day- in all kinds of weather- to keep you safe, dry, and snug. Delco-matic is the trouble-free, all-transistor operator made by Delco Products Division of General Motors. It’s quickly installed. Costs no more than most automatic washers. Both dashboard push button and portable hand control units available. Clip and mail the coupon today for full details.”
House Beautiful 1981, vol. 123, pg. 84
Original Caption: “Why Jill Clark is a Gibson Girl: Because she’s likely to spend 15,625 hours of her life doing the laundry.”
House Beautiful 2010, vol. 152
Original Caption: “Instant room: pull up a chair, meet Liz. She knows the rules, but she’s not afraid to tweak them. Just check out this dramatic dining room”