\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tSome of the guests at Saturday\u2019s event at Woodmere wore Mary McFadden dresses. <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Courtesy<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tLast weekend six or so of the women who attended Saturday\u2019s ribbon cutting ceremony for the opening of the Woodmere\u2019s Frances M. Maguire Hall for Art & Education were dressed in Mary McFadden, according to McFadden\u2019s friend Joan Olden, who joined the designer\u2019s company in 1972. Another attendee, the historian and educator Helen Drutt, told Olden about meeting McFadden in the 1970s and how she helped the designer find vendors when they both were in India. That is where McFadden had her Zardozi embroidery made. Olden said that she and Drutt reminisced about the designer and McFadden\u2019s business partner Patrick Lanan, as well as his extensive art collection. Some of the guests who inquired about where they could find McFadden\u2019s designs were informed that plans for a lending library are being discussed.<\/p>\n Some of the jewelry that is on view at Maguire Hall includes handcrafted, hammered brass pieces that McFadden had made decades ago by dipping them in 22-karat gold. Some were of various shapes and from different cultures including Phoenician, Roman and others. There were also ceramic discs that she intertwined with gold macram\u00e9. McFadden\u2019s pieces are on display with the work of other artisans from Philadelphia in one of the new galleries.<\/p>\n Opening to the public on Saturday, Maguire Hall is a 17,000-square-foot addition of interior space including 14 galleries, a children\u2019s art and education studio, and public spaces for events and programs. There are also four more acres of greenery.<\/p>\n The choice of a Philadelphia museum adds up, since McFadden\u2019s family was from the city and some of her relatives still live there, Olden said. In a 2024 interview with WWD, McFadden told WWD, \u201cPhiladelphia is closest to my heart. My family comes from Philadelphia.\u201d<\/p>\n One of her relatives, John H. McFadden, a cotton magnate who died in 1921,\u00a0started an art collection of British masterpieces that is largely why the Philadelphia Museum of Art was built. Dubbed \u201cthe Cotton King,\u201d McFadden was president of the New York Cotton Exchange at one point, and was also a major player in Liverpool for more than two decades before returning to his hometown to live out his later years. In addition to dealing cotton futures and collecting art, he supported medical\u00a0research and polar exploration, as readers can learn in\u00a0Richard Carre\u00f1o\u2019s \u201cJohn H. McFadden and His Age, Cotton and Culture in Philadelphia.\u201d<\/p>\n Acknowledging\u00a0the McFadden family\u2019s history in Philadelphia, Olden also highlighted some of the designer\u2019s personal history such as being the first female president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. \u201cThere are real ties to\u00a0both cities,\u201d Olden said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More than a year after Mary McFadden\u2019s death, the designer\u2019s work is being spotlighted via two different initiatives. On Saturday, some of McFadden\u2019s jewels were officially unveiled through a donation to the museum in Chestnut Hill, Pa., that is known simply as Woodmere. \u00a0And earlier this month, the majority of her archive was moved to the Pratt Institute.\u00a0 McFadden, an inveterate traveler whose collections were often inspired by ancient civilizations, and cultural and historical references, died Sept. 13, 2024, at the age of 85. The New\u00a0York\u00a0school\u00a0said that the Mary McFadden fashion archive has officially relocated to Pratt\u2019s Brooklyn campus in the Juliana Curran Terian Design Center. Prior to her death, the designer had established her namesake archive at Drexel University in Philadelphia, which staged an exhibition of her designs in 2024. Now Drexel, the McFadden family, and the Pratt Institute department of fashion design have collaborated for the new arrangement, which brings hundreds of McFadden\u2019s creations back to the city, where she built her\u00a0business and where she lived\u00a0for most of her adult life. With her fashion designs, McFadden carved out a niche for herself, by creating hand-painted textiles, opulent beading, bejeweled embellishment and signature Marii pleating. She was known as \u201cthe High Priestess of Fashion.\u201d\u00a0In an interview with WWD last year, she singled out her time in Paris as a teenager at the Sorbonne for leaving an indelible impression on her outlook on life. Along with about 100 garments, Pratt students will also have access to such\u00a0archival materials as McFadden\u2019s patterns, artisanal textiles, sketch and design books, promotional content, and video documentation. They will be able to take a closer look at McFadden\u2019s patented \u201cMarii\u201d fabric,\u00a0pleated material that was made \u201cto fall like liquid gold on the body,\u201d as she once said. Designed to offer \u201cexperiential learning,\u201d the new arrangement will include a\u00a0graduate fellowship program, which w…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"McFadden\"](\"https:\/\/wwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/IMG_1373-rotated.jpeg?w=225\")
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