Alice - MEMENTO Tote

This made-to-order high quality, reversible and oversized tote bag features a heavy weight 100% cotton organic canvas with distressed and frayed seams, printed with three striking artworks and one self-portrait of 19th-20th century American artist, Alice Pike-Barney.

Included is a matching oversized drawstring pouch for your umbrella, sunglasses, phone (or whatever you so desire!), as well as two fabric bookmarks and two slow-fashion advocacy patches to showcase your support of independent slow fashion. These items are made from the fabric offcuts and are included with the purchase of the tote ☺️

The MEMENTO collection is dedicated to remembering the remarkable women artists that history has overlooked.

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Alice Pike Barney (1857–1931): An artist labelled a socialite.

In 1880s Paris, Alice Pike Barney did something unimaginable for a woman of her social standing — she chose to take her art seriously.

Born into Cincinnati wealth and married to a railroad fortune, Alice was expected to use her wealth to collect paintings, not create them. Instead, she walked into the studio of Charles Émile Auguste Carolus-Duran, one of the most sought-after portrait masters in Europe, and enrolled as his student. She later studied under James McNeill Whistler, learning of the rules of tonal subtlety and atmospheric restraint, so she could break them with her art.

In November 1901, Alice held her first solo exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Within a week, she was elected vice-president of the Society of Washington Artists. She went on to build Studio House on Massachusetts Avenue — part gallery, part salon, part creative sanctuary — where she hosted artists, writers, and thinkers for nearly three decades where she produced ballets, plays, and tableaux.

And yet much of art history remembers Alice Pike Barney as a patron, not a painter. Her daughter Natalie became famous as a writer and salon hostess in Paris. Her Studio House was donated to the Smithsonian, then quietly sold. Many of her paintings sit in storage. The woman who defied every expectation placed upon wealthy women of her era has been gently reclassified as an eccentric benefactress rather than the artist she truly was.

I hope that in wearing her image and her beautiful artworks, you too will say "I see you, Alice".

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Designed and made by Meg in The Patch, Australia.  All megsmithmakes garments are Ethical Clothing Australia accredited and megsmithmakes is a proud member of Seamless Australia.