Description
Collection consists of fashion sketches by Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon. The color sketches are in pen or pencil with descriptions.
Background
Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon, was born Lucy Christiana Sutherland in London in 1863. She began a dressmaking business after her
divorce from James Stuart Wallace. The business was successful and evolved into Maison Lucile, a couture house known for Lucile's
ethereal and colorful designs, as well as for its celebrity clientele. In 1900 she married Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon. In addition
to her couture house, she wrote fashion columns for the Hearst papers as well as fashion magazines. Some of the commissions
she worked on around the time of these sketches were for the British premiere of the Franz Lehar operetta, The merry widow (1907), for Broadway's Ziegfeld follies revues (1915-1921), and for the Hollywood film, Way down East (1920). She died on April 20, 1935, at the age of 71, of breast cancer at a nursing home in London.
Extent
25 oversize boxes (255 items).
Restrictions
Property rights to the physical object belong to the UCLA Library,
Department of Special Collections. Literary rights, including copyright,
are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of
the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the
copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC
Regents do not hold the copyright.
Availability
COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF: Open for research. Advance notice required for access. Contact the UCLA Library, Department
of Special Collections Reference Desk for paging information.