This Bisexual Awareness Week, we’re looking back on this pioneering architect’s legacy
BY CJ DE BARRA, IMAGE VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Eileen Gray was a pioneering Irish architect, furniture designer, and creative woman who made a name for herself in both Paris and London. She was also openly bisexual, dating men and women. She was entirely self-taught and went on to create the iconic house, E1027, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in 1926.
She was considered an eccentric, free spirit who was unusual for women of her time. Women were not as well documented or included within the Parisian art scene as men were. Eileen was also considered shy and did not enjoy promoting her work.
Here are eight facts you need to know about Eileen…
She was born Kathleen Eileen Moray in County Wexford in 1878
Eileen was born into an aristocratic family and split her time between Ireland and London. When her mother inherited a peerage, the family became the Grays.
Eileen was one of the first women to study fine art, drawing and painting at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1898
She later switched to become a self-taught architect but was a talented painter and photographer.
She was unconventionally open about her queerness
Eileen made her way to Paris in 1902. She had a relationship with the artist Jesse Gavin from Oxton, Wirral. Jesse moved in very creative circles that included Oscar Wilde and Picasso. The two women became part of the fashionable lesbian arts scene in Paris and attended the salons of American writer Natalie Barney. Gavin would often adopt men’s clothing so she and Eileen could go places where men could go. Her mother never knew about her affairs with women, and she destroyed her personal belongings before she died.
Singer Marie-Louise Damien was rumoured to be the love of her life
The music hall and nightclub singer was known as Damia. She was known in Paris for singing songs about shipwrecks, murderers, sex work and the guillotine. The two women would go for drives in Eileen’s convertible, a Chenard Walker Roadster, with Damia’s pet panther in the back. She and the panther were said to be inseparable. Eventually, the pair fell out and never spoke again.
Eileen became one of the leading lacquer designers in Paris by the 1920s
She opened a shop, Galerie Jean Désert, after the war. It was highly unusual for a woman to open a shop like this, so this could be the reason why she used the man’s name, Jean.
During WWII, she was interned in France by the Germans as an “enemy alien”
Her home was looted, and she lost much of what she had designed.
She loved to get suited and booted
Eileen was considered an eccentric character who dressed in sharply tailor-made suits with a cropped bob. She also flew her own planes.
In 1976, Eileen passed away at the age of 98
The first retrospective of her work was held in London, and the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent bought one of her pieces.
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