Muriel was Richard Blow’s Publicity Director for his New York city gallery (in addition to her artistic career as a painter and fashion designer). As PR director, Muriel could tap into her own, personal circle of wealthy and sophisticated friends and business clients.
Muriel had established herself as a top designer of women’s high fashion. In the early 1930’s, in the depths of the Great Depression,, She was featured in the December 1933 issue of Fortune magazine - at that time the premiere business publication in the world.
It’s hard to believe now, but pre-World War I, all women’s high fashion came from Paris. There were no recognized American designers. Stores advertised their dresses as “straight from Paris”. In addition to her private studio she set up in Manhattan, Muriel’s designs were some of the first to be shown in the new “Altman’s Shop of American Design”, one of the new department stores on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Fortune magazine said in the article “Muriel King is the biggest news in the US haute couture. At Altman’s, she has shown whole collections using American fabrics exclusively.” Born in Seattle, Muriel was passionate about design and had lived in Paris while drawing designs of Paris collections for Vogue magazine. What she did was to totally revolutionize fashion design for American women with American fabrics.
In 1959, she pivoted from fashion design to painting. Before that, she had made paintings and drawings in her spare time, on weekends and holidays, without the intention of making it a career. The shift to full time artist consumed the rest of her life until her death in 1977. But she never lost her fashion touch.
She lived right next door to us. I still remember seeing her one summer when she was in her Seventies, sitting under a spreading New England maple tree, a beautiful silk scarf draped around her shoulders, working on a wonderful pen and ink drawing of a Greek outdoor cafe. The drawing eventually graced my brother Michael's wedding invitation in Honolulu.
John Schmuecker