Vera is featured in the CFDA’s (The Council of Fashion Designers of America) new book IMPACT: 50 Years of the CFDA. The book covers the past 50 years of Fashion and Designers and has decided to include Vera Neumann in their retrospective!
“Known for her bold use of color and brilliant designs, Vera’s artwork is still immediately identifiable today. She believed that fine art should not be relegated to the walls, but enjoyed in everyday life…”
The book includes designers such as Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, and Proenza Schouler among others and was released in collaboration with a CFDA exhibit at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York City.
Get your copy here!
The past few weeks have been very exciting here at The Vera Company! Debuting this week in all MAC retail stores and department stores (Macy’s and Bloomingdales) with MAC counters is the MAC/Vera Neumann collection for Spring 2012!
This limited edition collection features Pealmatte Face Powder, Pearlglide Intense Eye Liner, Crushed Metal Pigment, Plushglass and Nail Lacquer with a Vera twist!
Each of the colors has a name from a design in the Vera archives that fits it perfectly. All the colors in the collection are bright and cheerful and represent the essence of Vera’s art.
My personal favorite product is the Pearlmatte Face Powder with Vera’s signature and her ladybug!
Check out the Vera collection here. You’ll want to order soon as it is limited edition!
A few weeks ago we were lucky enough to attend the launch party for Tashen’s new book Norman Mailer, Bert Stern: Marilyn Monroe. The party was held in Beverly Hills at the Hotel Bel Air and was swarming with swanky celebs, including our very own Susan Seid, president of The Vera Company (Pictured above with photographer Bert Stern).
This masterpiece of a book is $1000 and includes pictures from Marilyn’s iconic last photo shoot with photographer Bert Stern, with commentary from the author of her biography, Norman Mailer. The book comes in a fabric covered box and the image featured on the cover is of Monroe draped in an orange and yellow striped Vera scarf! This amazing book is also lined with the design of the scarf. Marilyn Monroe by Taschen books would make an amazing gift for any Vera fan (or Marilyn fan!).
Vera is featured in Pantone’s new book “Pantone: The 20th Century in Color” For those who don’t know, Pantone is the authority in colors for the art and design world, producing their “color books” of swatches for designers to use to match colors worldwide.
I love what they say about her use of color—in the chapter on the 1970s:
“She turned everything from garden flowers to ancient Incan motifs into scarves and dresses, home textiles and posters. Her customers trusted Vera to manage the rainbow for them, and as a result, they were often some of the most confidently colorful ladies around.”
For the rest of the entry on Vera’s use of color, and tons of amazing pictures and commentary on colors, check out Pantone’s book The 20th Century in Color.
Just love these little ladybugs…
Inspiration. Anyone working in design is on a constant search for it. We make inspiration boards, scour blogs and virtual pinboards and fill our heads and our lives with things we hope will make us better designers. Working for a company that houses the archives of an artist that so many claim to be their own “design resource” leaves no shortage of inspiration. Vera Neumann created over 8,000 prints in her lifetime. Her goal — which she amazingly achieved — was to create 1 print per day. All her. All strong. All original.
Vera was able to create so much because she was inspired by everything — travel, culture, trends, seasons and nature. Every experience was a resource for her designs. Her mission was to create wearable illustrations inspired by her life. Even though she was inspired by everything around her, her travels were by far her largest visible inspiration. Back in the 1960s and ’70s — when the Vera Companies were in full swing, a single woman traveling around the world to exotic locales was almost unheard of. But Vera went everywhere — India, Africa, Peru, Haiti, Europe — and then would come home and design a collection based on what she had seen on her travels. Looking through the photos of those trips you can find anything from a gorgeous turquoise door in Morocco covered with intricate carvings to a cluster of flowers climbing up the side of a centuries old building in Germany. Surrounded by beauty like this, how could you not be inspired?
Today, companies like Anthropologie — with their Man Shops Globe buyer-at-large Keith Johnson and dreamy internationally-shot catalogs — are keeping this sense of travel-inspired work alive, filling their stores with “found objects” from exotic locales. But the real question is: how can we take a cue from Vera — looking to the world around us for inspiration? What kind of inspiration is hiding in our own backyard? How can we look to our little neighborhood as a design resource?
Where is your inspiration coming from right now?
Today we’re being featured on the Huffington Post’s new Home Design blog Stylelist with a post on Vera and Inspiration written by yours truly :)
Please take a look and like, retweet, and comment if you want more content on Vera and her design inspiration to be featured on Stylelist!
Inspiration, by Vera on Stylelist
Love this post from Picnic by Ellie on The Signature Scarf (and Vera, in particular)
Check out her other posts for some awesome vintage finds!
