From the start, clothing designer Vera Neumann A'28 (1907-93) took a very hands-on approach to creating her company, which began on her kitchen table where she and her husband converted her paintings into silk screened textiles made from surplus army silk. Their venture grew to become one of the best-known clothing brands of the 1960s and ‘70s. Neumann, whose highly familiar logo was a script version of her first name embellished with a small ladybug, brought a brightly colored, charming aesthetic to sportswear, housewares, and most famously, scarves.

Having studied painting at Cooper, she later became a practitioner of the Japanese art of sumi-e, ink brush painting, which she used frequently in her designs. Neumann and her body of work embodied the optimism of the era with her impressionistic interpretations of nature, often flowers, that became the must-have accessory for American women. Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, and Grace Kelly were among Neumann’s contemporaries to be photographed in her designs; more recently, Isla Fisher and Ashley Olsen have turned to the Vera catalog to compliment a retro ensemble. Neumann herself collected the work of artists she loved, most notably Alexander Calder. She commissioned her friend Marcel Breuer, one of the giants of 20th century modernist architecture, to design her Hudson Valley house and her first showroom.

In 2019, the Museum of Arts and Design mounted a retrospective of Neumann’s work called “Vera Paints a Scarf: The Art and Design of Vera Neumann.” The show emphasized the democratic ethos of her work and her desire that all people could have access to good design. Deeply influenced by the Bauhaus approach to craft and industry, she worked hard to make her products widely available and at reasonable prices. At the same time, she kept close watch over the quality of design with every product sold under the Vera label starting as a unique artwork. As she once said, “I put into my work a painter’s idea about what a scarf should look like.”