January 2022

Exterior View Vitra Design Museum © Vitra Design Museum Photo: Christoph Sagel

Vitra Design Museum boasts one of the world's most important collections of chairs. The white and curving Frank Gehry building was originally built to display a private archive of furniture, and has staged leading exhibitions of design since 1989. Toogood are proud to share a home in the Vitra collection alongside masterpieces by Eames, Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier.

Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 - Today is a landmark exhibition that sets out to celebrate the untold and under-represented stories of women in design.

The show presents women designers from the past 120 years, ranging from modernist heroes Eileen Gray and Lilly Reich, to lesserknown figures like social reformer Jane Addams. Faye Toogood is one of the contemporary designers included and the Roly-Poly chair features as the exhibition's poster image.

Installation view » Here we are! Women in Design 1900 - Today « © Vitra Design Museum
Photo Chrstoph Sagel © VG Bild-Kuns, Bonn 2021

The show is not simply a greatest hits of female-led design, it is a social history of the working conditions of women that charts how waves of feminism through the decades has influenced design.

The birth of the 20th Century saw design emerging as a profession in its own right, at the same time the fight for female suffrage bubbled up in Europe and America. The bid for emancipation is reflected in the work of social reformers Jane Addams and Louise Brigham, the pioneering spirit of Elsie de Wolfe (one of the world first interior designers) and the women designers who trained at, and then taught at, Europe's leading institutions.

Here We Are! tells a many-voiced story of design against the background of the struggle for equal rights and recognition.

Installation view » Here we are! Women in Design 1900 - Today « © Vitra Design Museum
Photo Chrstoph Sagel © VG Bild-Kuns, Bonn 2021

"I'm just so proud of the fact that finally, after all these years, pioneering female design is being properly acknowledged. The work of women in our industry is still missing from so many seminal books, collections... even conversations. It is not surprising that the perennially forward-thinking Vitra have met this challenge head on. This show of female leaders and visionaries has been a long time coming and what can I say other than I am super proud to be part of it, and to be the poster girl." - Faye Toogood

Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 - Today is on at the Vitra Design Musuem, Weil am Rhein, Germany until 6th March 2022.