Saturday, October 29, 4:00
Harrison Auditorium
University of Pennsylvania Museum

Illustrated Lecture by Mary McFadden, Haute Couture Designer and Textile Scholar and Honorary Chair, Treasures...From the Silk Road to the Santa Fe Trail

Presented by Glenmede

Admission

• Lecture, Reception, Book Signing, and Show and Sale: $75.00
• Lecture, Show and Sale: $35.00; Students: $10
• Group rates available
• For tickets or more information, call 215-898-9213 or email treasures@museum.upenn.edu
• Make check payable to The Women's Committee and mail to:
  The Women's Committee
  University of Pennsylvania Museum
  3260 South Street
  Philadelphia, PA 19104

Parking
Discount parking available Lot #7 (next to Museum)

About Mary McFadden

Mary McFadden has been called a “design archaeologist,” “a high priestess of fashion,” and “an American fashion icon.” She is truly a friend of the University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Mary McFadden draws ideas and expressions from other cultures into her couture designs. One writer said that “the art of ancient civilizations is literally woven into her fabrics.” Her designs celebrate ancient Near Eastern, African, Classical Greek, Javanese, Pre-Columbian, Dynastic Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures ...and give an art form to dressing.

Though Mary McFadden is based in New York, she has strong ties to Philadelphia through family and friends. In 2000 she participated in the Penn Museum’s “44 Celebrity Eyes,” in which 22 internationally famous people each selected a favorite artifact from a Museum storeroom for an exhibition. Last year the Allentown Art Museum organized the first career retrospective of her designs. That exhibition, “Mary McFadden: High Priestess of High Fashion,” opened in September 2005 at The Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, TN.

As a young girl, Mary McFadden lived on a cotton plantation in Tennessee, then moved to Long Island, NY. She was schooled in New York and Paris, and studied sociology and anthropology at Columbia University. After working as a publicist for Christian Dior – New York and as an editor for Vogue South Africa, she launched her first collection in New York in 1973. She quickly became known for her exuberant use of color and her signature pleated polyester fabric, “Marii.”

Mary McFadden won a Coty Award in 1976 and entered the Coty Hall of Fame in 1979. Since then she has received many honors, including the Neiman Marcus Award for Excellence, the President’s Fellow Award of the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Fashion Week of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award. She has served as President of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. McFadden collections have been shown all over the world – including New York, Paris, Rome, Milan, Tokyo, St. Petersburg, Russia, India, Thailand, Central and South America, and the Middle East.

An internationally-renowned textile, clothing and jewelry designer, Mary McFadden is also a designer of dramatic interior décor, a world traveler, an avid art collector, textile collector, journalist, successful entrepreneur and ever-curious scholar. She has fashioned costumes for a film about a Kashmiri Queen. Most of all, she is a woman of exquisite style.

The Women’s Committee is delighted to welcome our friend Mary McFadden as Honorary Chair of the first “Treasures” Show and Sale.