DuPont Pavilion

Susan Brown

From 1955 to 1971, Liebes served as “style authority” for DuPont’s Textile Fibers Department. Her duties included experimenting with newly developed synthetic yarns, creating samples and full-scale draperies for exhibitions and trade shows, giving lectures and workshops, appearing in print ads and radio and television spots, designing DuPont’s displays at Chicago’s Merchandise Mart and other trade shows, and even redesigning the office of the president in the company’s New York showrooms in the Empire State Building.  

For the company’s massive pavilion at the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, she created the stage curtains for its two large theaters: The Blue Theater and The Gold Theater. The curtain for the Blue Theater was in a palette of blues and greens with sapphire and emerald metallic yarns and a variegated, tri-color metallic (Fig. 1). It was a color combination Liebes was credited with “inventing”—or at least popularizing—through earlier projects like the SS United States First Class Observation Lounge and the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel. The Gold Theater curtain covered the range from red-orange through yellow-green, and it glimmered with rose gold and green-gold metallics (Fig. 2). Naturally, the curtains showcased DuPont products like Orlon. “We like the big, cordy look which came in this week . . . this gives a really large-scale tow appearance to the yarn,” she said. Regarding the metallics, she explained, “There’s a great deal of gold and metal and we’ve used the braided because the flat fold will not fireproof. Wherever the yarn is braided the DuPont lab and the PermaDry laboratories have proven that the fluid will stick to the cracks and resist flame”—a technical detail with serious implications for a theater. [1] 

The Wonderful World of Chemistry, the musical revue presented simultaneously forty times per day in the two theaters, incorporated both live and filmed actors and animated characters. One segment was a show of American fashions using DuPont synthetic fibers—“five great designers and five great fibers.” [2] The fibers were DuPont’s Antron nylon, Dacron polyester, Lycra spandex, nylon, and Orlon acrylic. The featured designers were Donald Brooks, Oleg Cassini, Cecil Chapman, David Kidd of Arthur Jablow, and John Weitz.  

With her many textile industry contracts and connections, Liebes had been instrumental over a period of years in the development of fashion fabrics using synthetic yarns, making a show like DuPont’s possible. For example, through her close relationship with fashion designer Bonnie Cashin, she began working with Jasco Fabrics. She encouraged the company to experiment with Orlon; the resulting Liebes-designed fabrics were used by Cashin and by other designers, including Andrew Wood and Pattullo-Jo Copeland. Those fashions, in turn, were promoted by DuPont through DuPont New York Fashions, a collaboration with the New York Couture Business Council. The press release called out Liebes’s contributions: “One of the best of the season’s bold tweeds in shock colors is chosen by Jo Copeland of Pattullo for this coat-weight jacket . . . Tweed fabric in block pattern, by Dorothy Liebes for Jasco in Antron nylon and wool, is red and purple.” (Fig. 3) The coat by Andrew Wood was made in a “non-conformist fabric designed by the noted Dorothy Liebes for Jasco. It’s a chenille-dotted homespun of Antron nylon and wool with big bold dots of red on black” (Fig. 4). [3] 

NOTES 

[1] Dorothy Liebes, letter to Mr. Lanier Branson (Branson Company), December 16, 1963. Series 5, Box 9, Folder 4, Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. 

[2] E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, The Wonderful World of Chemistry, 1964, Hagley Digital Archives, DuPont Company films and commercials, https://digital.hagley.org/FILM_1995300_FC204. 

[3] E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, press release, June 15, 1966, Hagley Museum & Library.

 

 

Fig. 1 Detail of woven fabric with narrow vertical stripes in varied shades of blue and green.

Fig. 1 Prototype curtain for Blue Theater, DuPont Pavilion, New York World’s Fair, 1964; DuPont Orlon and Fairtex metallic yarn; Museum of Arts & Design, Gift of Dorothy Liebes Design through the American Craft Council, 1973.2.11

Fig. 2 Detail of a woven fabric with narrow vertical stripes in shades of yellow and orange.

Fig. 2 Prototype curtain for Gold Theater, DuPont Pavilion, New York World’s Fair, 1964; DuPont Orlon and Fairtex metallic yarn, Museum of Arts & Design, Gift of Dorothy Liebes Design through the American Craft Council, 1973.2.12

Fig. 3 Black-and-white photograph of a model in an urban landscape wearing a dark hat, sweater, and skirt, with a jacket with a small geometric design.

Fig. 3 Ensemble designed by Pattullo-Jo Copeland in fabric designed by Dorothy Liebes for Jasco, DuPont New York Fashions, 1966; Photo by Richard Dormer; Hagley Library

Fig. 4 Black-and-white photograph of a model in an urban landscape wearing a dark swing coat with lighter dots, dark gloves.

Fig. 4 Coat designed by Andrew Wood in fabric designed by Dorothy Liebes for Jasco, DuPont New York Fashions, 1966; Photo by Richard Dormer; Hagley Library

Susan Brown

Susan Brown is Associate Curator and Acting Head of Textiles at Cooper Hewitt, where she has curated over a dozen exhibitions including Fashioning Felt (2009), Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay (2011), Scraps: Fashion, Textiles and Creative Reuse (2016), Suzie Zuzek for Lilly Pulitzer: The Prints that Made the Fashion Brand (2021) and A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes (2023).