Cynthia Rowley
Cynthia Rowley was seven when she constructed her first dress. As a senior at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she sold her first collection of eight pieces to a number of New York’s most prominent stores. Since then, the Cynthia Rowley Collection has grown beyond women’s wear to include beauty, baby, bicycles, active-wear, home sewing patterns, tools, handbags, shoes, legwear, and shapewear.
Rowley is a best-selling author of the Swell series and has five books to date; her most recent, Slim: A Fantasy Memoir, includes her original drawings. She is a mother of two daughters and is married to Bill Powers, co-owner of Half Gallery on the Lower East Side and judge on Bravo’s competition series Work of Art. Bill and Cynthia co-founded the art retail site Exhibition A with Laura Martin and Gabby Munoz, which offers limited-edition contemporary fine artworks to its members. Rowley has collaborated in creative ventures and capsule collections with artists Will Cotton, Nick Cave, Olaf Breuning, and Ryan McNamara, and is constantly pursuing groundbreaking artistic partnerships.
She has appeared on numerous television shows, including The Late Show with David Letterman, Oprah, Good Morning America, and Today. She regularly appears as a guest judge on Project Runway and Design Star. Rowley’s designs have been featured in nearly every major magazine domestically and internationally, including Vogue, Elle, W, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Marie Claire, Lucky, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Elle Décor, In Style, and Vogue Paris, among many others. The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) honored her with the prestigious Perry Ellis Award for Womenswear and recognized her again with a nomination for New Menswear Design Talent. The Cynthia Rowley Collection is sold in better department, specialty, and online stores, as well as in approximately 60 Cynthia Rowley shops around the world.
Announcements
Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister
Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023
Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)
By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023
This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.
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