Jessie Franklin Turner

{{Infobox fashion designer

| name = Jessie Franklin Turner

| image = Jessie_Franklin_Turner.jpg

| caption = Jessie Franklin Turner in 1954.

| nationality = American

| birth_name = Jessie Franklin Turner

| birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1881|12|10}}

| birth_place = St. Louis, Missouri

| death_date = 1956 (aged 74-75)

| death_place =

| label_name = {{plainlist|

Jessie Frankiin Turner
Winifred Warren Inc.

}}

| awards =

| parents = Richard Major Turner; Louise Pullen Franklin.

| spouse = Charles Hiram Ferguson

}}

Jessie Franklin Turner (10 December 1881 – 1956) was an American fashion designer based in New York in the early 20th century. She was notable for being one of the first American designers to create unique designs, rather than imitating or copying Paris fashions, and was the first American fashion designer to establish a long-term couture business in New York.{{Cite book|last=Reeder|first=Jan Glier|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/970386965|title=The hidden history of American fashion : rediscovering twentieth-century women designers|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|others=Nancy Deihl|year=2018|isbn=978-1-350-00104-6|location=London|pages=|chapter=Jessie Franklin Turner: An Intimate Affair|oclc=970386965}}

Personal life

Franklin Turner stated that she was born in St. Louis in Missouri, to Richard Major Turner of Wheeling, West Virginia, and Louise Pullen Franklin of Plymouth, Massachusetts on 10 December 1881, although Morris de Camp Crawford presented her as being a Virginian native from the state's tidewater region when promoting her alongside other American textile and fashion designers in his 1916-1922 "Made in America" campaign.{{cite journal|last1=Mears|first1=Patricia E.|title=Jessie Franklin Turner: American Fashion and "Exotic" Textile Inspiration|journal=Creating Textiles: Makers, Methods, Markets. Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, Inc. New York, NY|date=September 23–26, 1998|pages=431–440|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RmlQAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Jessie+Franklin+Turner%22|publisher=Textile Society of America, Inc.}} [http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/191/ Summary on University of Nebraska Digital Commons], accessed 4 January 2015 After Turner's birth, their parents moved to Peoria, Illinois. She was trained in singing, painting, and sculpture when she was a child. She attended sculpting classes at the Paris studio of sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. Turner studied high school education at Berkeley School in Peoria.

In chapter 3 of the 1955 Patrick Dennis novel, Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade, it is winter 1931 and Jessie Franklin Turner is a character that hires the fictitious Auntie Mame as a saleswoman to work in her shop.

She married Charles Hiram Ferguson, but retained her maiden name professionally. She died in 1956.

Career

File:Jessie Franklin Turner tea gown 1935.jpg)]]

When Turner was a teenager, she was employed in a local lingerie store called Fischer Brothers, where she suggested to the owner that she could improve the quality and range of their merchandise. Following this, she became a buyer for the lingerie department at the St. Louis department store Scruggs, Vandervoort and Barney. In 1908, Turner was hired as the European buyer for the firm McCutcheon & Co.'s "The Linen Store", which allowed her to learn more about lingerie and textiles.

In 1911, Paul Bonwit hired Turner as a European and Oriental goods buyer for Bonwit Teller between 1916 and 1918.{{cite news|last1=Staff writer|title=Palm Beach Winter Resident Recalls First Big Purchase|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1961&dat=19541231&id=xHQtAAAAIBAJ&pg=2768,1004164|access-date=4 January 2015|work=Palm Beach Daily News|date=31 December 1954}} Between 1913 and 1915 Bonwit deployed Turner to the Philippines to supervise a handmade lingerie factory there. In 1918, Turner went on to design for Bonwit Teller's custom salon under the name of Winifred Warren Inc.{{cite web|last1=Rose |first1=Evan M. |title=Tea Gowns: Winifred Warren (Jessie Franklin Turner) for Bonwit Teller. Exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History |url=http://evanmrose.co/projects/dev/mediacombo/public/tea_gowns# |website=American Art in American Dress: Revisiting the Exhibition of Industrial Art in Textiles and Costumes 1919. |access-date=4 January 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150104190255/http://evanmrose.co/projects/dev/mediacombo/public/tea_gowns |archive-date= 4 January 2015 }} In 1919 the American Museum of Natural History featured a selection of 'Winifred Warren' teagowns and lingerie for Bonwit Teller in their Exhibition of Industrial Art in Textiles and Costumes.

Franklin Turner's shop, which she opened in 1923, was based at 410 Park Avenue, New York.{{cite book |last1=Milbank |first1=Caroline Rennolds |title=New York fashion : the evolution of American style |date=1996 |publisher=Abrams |location=New York |isbn=9780810926479 |pages=86, 89, 122 |edition=Paperback}} Developing her work by directly draping on a model, Franklin Turner was known particularly for flowing tea gowns and exotic evening dresses, often made in fabrics of her own design.{{cite web|title=Dress, ca. 1937 |url=http://metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/158951 |website=The Collection Online|publisher=Metropolitan Museum of Art |access-date=1 January 2015}}{{cite web|title=Gold lamé evening dress, ca. 1933 |url=http://metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/159052 |website=The Collection Online |publisher=Metropolitan Museum of Art|access-date=1 January 2015}} In 1923 she acknowledged the influence of historical and ethnographic textiles in the Brooklyn Museum's collections on many of her most successful designs.{{cite news|last1=Appleton Reed |first1=Helen |title=The Secret of Art Appreciation|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/1942967/the_brooklyn_daily_eagle/|access-date=8 March 2015|work=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle |via=Newspapers.com|date=20 May 1923}} These influences continued throughout her career. In 1938, a day dress based on an Ainu coat was exhibited alongside the original coat in the second annual exhibition of New York's Museum of Costume Art.{{cite news|last1=Staff writer|title=Ainu Garb Inspires a New Ensemble|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/1942860/article_on_jessie_franklin_turner_and/|access-date=8 March 2015|work=The Piqua Daily Call| via= Newspapers.com|date=21 June 1938}} Franklin Turner was one of the directors of this museum, which was located in the Rockefeller Center on the fourth floor.{{cite news|last1=Blanck|first1=Katherine|title=Design Sources Seen at Costume Art Exhibit |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/1943070/the_brooklyn_daily_eagle/ |access-date=8 March 2015 |work=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle |via=Newspapers.com |date=15 October 1940}}

In 1923 Paul Poiret was quoted as having declared Franklin Turner "the only designer of genius in the United States." When the designer Elizabeth Hawes returned to New York in 1928 to launch her American couture house, she noted that Jessie Franklin Turner was possibly the only American dressmaker at that time to offer high end clothing that was completely her own work, and not made in imitation of Paris fashions.{{cite book| last = Hawes| first = Elizabeth| title = Fashion Is Spinach| url = https://archive.org/details/fashionisspinach00hawerich| publisher = Random House| year = 1938| pages = Chapter 11}}

Although Franklin Turner reportedly never met any of her clients, she was known for her unique and striking clothing for individualistic dressers such as the textile designer Dorothy Liebes and the socialite and fashion icon Millicent Rogers.{{cite web|title=Bedjacket, ca. 1930 |url=http://metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/157656|website=The Collection Online|publisher=Metropolitan Museum of Art |access-date=1 January 2015}} She retired in 1943.

Exhibitions

1919: Exhibition of Industrial Art in Textiles and Costumes, American Museum of Natural History. Selection of 'Winifred Warren' teagowns and lingerie designed for Bonwit Teller.
1938: Second annual exhibition at New York's Museum of Costume Art. Ainu-inspired day dress.
1942: Renaissance in Fashions, 1942 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Velvet and brocade teagown.{{cite news|last1=Adrian|first1=Tracy|title=Renaissance in Fashion|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/1942915/contemporary_fashion_exhibition_at_the/|access-date=8 March 2015|work=The Evening News, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.|date=29 May 1942}}
2013-14 An American Style, Bard Graduate Center. The 1919 AMNH exhibition revisited.{{cite web|title=An American Style: About the Exhibition|url=http://www.bgc.bard.edu/gallery/gallery-at-bgc/past-exhibitions/an-american-style/the-exhibition.html|website=The Gallery at Bard Graduate Center|access-date=4 January 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150104182310/http://www.bgc.bard.edu/gallery/gallery-at-bgc/past-exhibitions/an-american-style/the-exhibition.html|archive-date=4 January 2015|url-status=dead}}.

Garments by Jessie Franklin Turner are in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, the Art Institute of Chicago,[http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/61808?from=61808 Embroidered silk and velvet tea gown in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago] and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.{{cite web|title=Jessie Franklin Turner in the RISD Museum|url=http://risdmuseum.org/art_design/objects/tags/maker/Turner%2C%20Jessie%20Franklin|website=Rhode Island School of Design Museum Collections Search|publisher=RISD Museum|access-date=4 January 2015}}

Jessie Franklin Turner

Personal life

Career

Exhibitions

References

Further reading