"Flashingly Brilliant"

The Woman Who Sold It 

Madame Marie Cuttoli (1879-1973) 

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The Ulster Museum’s cloak is a stunning and unusual piece, embroidered in golds, bright yellows, silver, orange and purples in an eye-poppingly lively abstract design. According to the Ulster Museum’s records, its original owner, the Countess of Midleton, purchased the cloak from a fittingly unusual store, the mysteriously named ‘Myrbor’, a luxurious Parisian boutique founded in 1922 by Madame Marie Cuttoli. 

Cuttoli’s aspirations for Myrbor went beyond merely catering to Paris’s style-conscious elite. A prominent figure in Paris’s art scene with a passion for textiles, Cuttoli wanted to create a space where the arts of painting, tapestry and fashion could be interwoven (literally) under one roof. Inside Myrbor a customer could find modernist fashion, as well as tapestries and rugs woven after cartoons by some of the most important artists of the period including Léger, Derain, Dufy, Miro, Matisse, Braque, Picasso and Lurçat.¹ 

Cuttoli not only hired artists to design the rugs and tapestries available in her store, she also insisted that the clothing, including the Ulster Museum’s cloak, be artworks in their own right.  To this end she frequently reached out to the costume designers of the famous Ballets Russes. 

A contemporary account from Therese and Louise Bonney’s 1929 book “A Shopping Guide to Paris” gives an insight into the atmosphere of Myrbor, where art and fashion were united: 

“Andre Lurçat is responsible for the successful setting in which you see not only the individual gowns of this house, but also the rugs and decorative accessories, and a continuously changing exhibit of modem paintings. The gowns, too, are what might be called a 'changing exhibit of modern art…If you like to see a Léger or a Lurçat or a Picasso on your walls, you will like to wear Myrbor clothes.” 2 

Cuttoli’s ambition to present Myrbor as an artistic alternative to other fashion houses is also reflected in a 1920s advertisement found in Harpers Bazar which describes Myrbor as “for the woman who seeks an expression of personality in her clothes.”

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Cuttoli achieved her aim, and soon after opening Myrbor quickly became renowned among the fashionable as the place to find wearable art. International recognition came as Myrbor gowns became a regular feature in US Harpers Bazar, partially thanks to the glowing reviews and images of Myrbor clothing regularly supplied to the magazine by Baron Adolphe de Meyer, Harper’s Bazar’s correspondent and pre-eminent fashion photographer. De Meyer would regularly praise Myrbor in his columns; in one article he wrote “Should you want daring originality and have leanings toward art, I advise you to visit Poiret, or Myrbor…you will find clothes which are unusual and in many cases works of art.”³  

Myrbor’s reputation as the locus for art, textiles and fashion was further affirmed when she showed her wares at the Paris 1925 International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, and was well received by critics.⁴ 

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Today, few garments by Myrbor survive, although some examples exist in public collections such as the Metropolitan Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. As the Metropolitan Museum notes, Myrbor clothing represent “an important moment in fashion history where fashion, art and expression came together.”⁵  

The Woman Who Designed It 

Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) 

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Although Marie Cuttoli had both the vision and entrepreneurship to unite art and fashion through her Myrbor store, she did not design or make any of the garments she sold. 

Instead she approached professional artists for the task, the first of whom was the Russian émigré Natalia Goncharova.⁶ 

Born in 1881 in the village of of Negaevo in the Tula province of Central Russia, Goncharova was an extraordinarily prolific and eclectic artist. Her enormous output included paintings, works on paper, designs for theatre, textiles and fashion, wallpaper and popular prints. ⁷  She also spent time working for the famous Russian couturière Nadejda Lamanova in Moscow, where she experimented with distorted, brightly coloured forms to create clothing inspired by Russian folk art and Byzantine mosaics.⁸ 

Her output was so immense that in 1913, aged only 32, she held a one-woman retrospective featuring over 800 works, including bold abstract embroidery patterns and designed ornamental needlework and textiles in striking colour palettes. ⁹ 

The following year Goncharova was invited to Paris by the impresario Sergei Diagalev to make costume and set designs for "The Golden Cockerel", a new show which was staged at the Paris Opera just before the outbreak of the First World War. The combined opera-ballet about a foolish old Tsar, based on a fairy-tale by Pushkin, suited Goncharova’s sensibilities and interests perfectly, being both quintessentially Russian and fantastical. She threw herself into research by visiting museums to study historic costume worn by boyars, whilst also being influenced by her love of simple Russian folk art and icons. The result, in the words of the choreographer Michel Fokine, was “something unexpected, beautiful in colour, profoundly natural and at the same time enchanting.”¹⁰ 

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Diagalev too was impressed, stating “Goncharova’s designs are simply fabulous! They are exceedingly poetic and very interesting in terms of colour.”¹¹ 

The staggering success of this production opened up new creative horizons for her and she became one of Diaghilev's 'resident' designers, touring Europe with the Ballets Russes until 1919 when she settled permanently in Paris.¹²  

During the 1920s and 1930s she became an active participant in what has become known as the School of Paris. She regularly attended artistic soirées and was familiar with painters such as Matisse, Derain, Picasso, Delaunay and Léger, as well as writers such as Jean Cocteau and the Dada poet Tristan Tzara.¹³ 

Given the artistic milieu that she moved in and her successful backgroufnd in costume design, it is not surprising that Cuttoli chose Goncharova to design avant-garde clothing for her Myrbor store when it opened in 1922. Goncharova’s status as a prominent Russian émigré may also have appealed to Cuttoli, as it would help to position her newly founded store as part of a wider cultural trend at the time for Slavic exoticism, driven by the 1917 Russian Revolution and the resulting mass migration of Russian citizens to Paris and other parts of Europe. ¹⁴   

The pair worked together for six years, from 1922 until Cuttoli chose at the end of the decade to focus on decorative textiles suitable for interior decoration. In that time Goncharova created designs for dresses, wraps, blouses and coats. It now also seems very possible that Goncharova herself also designed the Ulster Museum cloak which we know to have come from Madame Cuttoli’s store.   

In an astonishing coincidence, in May 1924 Baron Adolphe de Meyer photographed for Harpers Bazar what appears to be the same cloak in the Ulster Museum’s collection – complete with fur collar. He described it as “an evening wrap characteristic of Myrbor…of black satin, lined with violet, and embroidered in gold, violet, orange, red and green. It is flashingly brilliant.”¹⁵ This rare instance of a Myrbor garment being documented on camera at the time it was made means that we can accurately date the cloak in the Ulster Museum to 1924, marking it as an early Myrbor piece. 

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Notably, the lining of the Ulster Museum cloak is black, not violet, contradicting de Meyer’s description. However, this is not a conclusive argument against the cloak being one of Goncharova’s designs, given how easily linings can be replaced. An inspection of the current lining of the cloak seems to indicate that it is not original. It does not fit the rest of the cloak well, being loose at the bottom of the cloak despite the couture-level needlework of the rest of the garment. The black fabric of the lining, though a close match, also appears to be a different material than the rest of the cloak. 

The advantage of the lining not fitting the hem of the garment means that we are able to get a clear view of the underside of the cloak’s beautiful embroidery, seeing details of the needlework and colours unfaded by light exposure (though the exterior of the cloak also remains remarkably vibrant). 

Very similar cloaks in different colour runs exist in the collection of the Galerie Berdj Achdijan and in the private collection of “The Way We Wore,” store in Los Angeles in red and lime green respectively, each densely embroidered in gold and silver. Both of these cloaks were exhibited in the Barnes Foundation 2020 exhibition, “Marie Cuttoli: The Modern Thread from Miro to Man Ray” and attributed as designed by Goncharova for Myrbor.¹⁶ Another similar black velvet evening cloak with embroidery in gold and silver also attributed to Goncharova is in the collection of the Met Museum, New York, dated 1925, close in date to the time the Ulster Museum cloak was probably made.¹⁷ 

For an artist like Goncharova, one of the advantages of designing large flat garments like cloaks would have been that their simple, flat construction lends itself well to large, painterly patterns and embroideries, like a satin canvas. It’s also worth noting that when compared with Goncharova’s abstract paintings and designs, sections of the Ulster Museum cloak share several characteristics, such as bold, abstract plant and flower motifs in striking colour combinations, seemingly arranged with the “deliberate crudeness” that is one of Goncharova’s hallmarks.” ¹⁸ 

Goncharova’s work during her Ballets Russes and Myrbor periods display her talents not only as a fine artist, but also as great costume and designer of haute-couture fashion in Art Deco Paris. Very few of her creations for stage and the fashion world are still extant, but those that remain available to us in public collections reveal an exuberant and unique eye for design that de Meyer rightfully termed “flashingly brilliant.” 

The Woman Who Wore It 

Guinevere Jeanne Sinclair Gould (1885-1978) 

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It must have been between 1924 and 1925 when Guinevere Jeanne Sinclair Gould, Later Countess of Midleton, walked into the Galarie Myrbor on 17 Rue Vignon, Paris, and bought the “flashingly brilliant” cloak now in the collection of the Ulster Museum. In later life she would refer to this cloak as “her Poiret”, referencing the most famous French avant-garde couturier of the twentieth century, though there is no evidence Cuttoli ever sold any Poiret clothing in Myrbor. The comment was probably intended to add further mystique to the already impressive garment, as well as confusion for future museum curators! 

Just as the cloak itself is a whirlwind of colour, so too was Guinevere’s life up to that point. She had come a long way to reach Paris, and her journey had been eventful, to say the least. Born Guinevere Jeanne Sinclair in 1885 in Iowa USA, to Alexander Sinclair of Dublin and Lena King, by 1913 she had left home to find her fame and fortune as an actress. She became a chorus girl for the Gaiety Theatre under the stage name of Vere Sinclair. It was whilst performing in a production of the musical comedy “The Girl on the Film” that she caught the eye of one of the richest men in New York, the multi-millionaire financier George Jay Gould, her senior by decades. ¹⁹

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George was already married when the pair met to Edith Kingdon, also a former actress and the mother of seven of George’s children. 

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It was common for high society men in New York to have mistresses, and Edith is said to have been aware of the affair and of the three children it produced. Indeed, the affair must have been an open secret as George spent small fortunes keeping Guinevere in luxury, first by putting her up in a beautiful estate on Manursing Island, near his yacht club on the coast of New York, and later by buying her a town house in the city.²⁰  

All the same, Edith is said to have tried to regain her husband’s affections by taking up exercise to lose weight. She was particularly keen on golf and had the family’s polo court converted into a nine-hole course, believing that the fresh air and exercise was conducive to good health. On the afternoon of November 14, 1921, while golfing with her husband on their private links, Edith suddenly and soundlessly collapsed. Doctors determined she had died of a heart-attack, aged only 57.²¹ She had been suffering no ill-health that anyone noticed, but according to several reports, she had been wearing an extremely tight rubber suit underneath her dress that day. Such “medicated” rubber garments were advertised in papers in New York at the time and were promoted as a way to lose weight through perspiration. No doubt if she had been wearing one, it would have aggravated any existing heart condition. 

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George grieved his wife for only six months before marrying Guinevere in a secret ceremony in New York on May 1^st 1922. Very few knew of their plans and no one from either George or Guinevere’s families were invited. The attendees were limited to just three witnesses, the Register and the Judge. The marriage was held in the Judge’s house with him promising the bride and groom not to announce the wedding. Although ceremony only lasted an hour, the atmosphere was tense with everyone involved showing signs of nerves. The ring was a misfit, causing George to struggle to fit the wedding band onto Guinevere’s finger, and she was said to burst into tears when he kissed her. After leaving the Judge’s house by automobile, the pair set sail for London, and later arrived at the luxurious Le Meurice hotel in Paris on July 14^th.²² It is believed George had no intention of ever returning, except as far as he would need to settle his legal affairs. 

The reasons for their hasty departure were understandable. Whilst having a mistress was relatively accepted in high society, to actually marry her, thus legitimising her three young children by George Gould, would have been seen as scandalous. In fact, the situation was so clandestine that it is possible that not even George’s children by his first marriage knew where their father was until he sent them a telegram from Europe stating that stating the pair were there on honeymoon! 

The marriage, however, did not last long. As it emerged, George was a sick man and knew he may not have much longer to live when he married Guinevere. During their honeymoon he was driven by curiosity about the recently discovered tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankahmun and brought his new family to Luxor, intending to go further to visit Thebes and see the boy-king’s resting place; he never made it that far. Due to the extreme heat of the day and the sudden drop in temperature at night, George contracted a cold that ended in pneumonia. Following the pneumonia attack, he returned to the South of France where his health deteriorated further until he died on May 16^th 1923, aged 58.²³ Despite never having seen Tutankhamen’s tomb, such was the public fervour for “Egyptomania” at the time that papers claimed Gould’s death, like Lord Carnavon’s the year before him, was due to “the curse of the mummy.”²⁴  

It was Guinevere and her three children who were now about to face a living curse in the form of a long and bitter battle for George Gould’s inheritance. The Gould family by George’s first marriage with Edith fought vehemently in court for their father’s properties. The inheritance was ultimately settled with Sinclair receiving $1 million in liberty bonds and the children receiving a $4 million trust fund.²⁵ Guinevere’s romantic life hit the papers again in 1925 when she married George St. John Broderick, Viscount Dunsford, soon after his divorce from his first wife Peggy Rush, also a former actress. 

It would have been in the midst of this maelstrom of marriages, deaths, and court cases, all worthy of an Agatha Christie novel, that Guinevere Gould probably decided to indulge herself to a fascinating cloak from Myrbor. It was, afterall the place for “the woman who seeks expression of personality in her gowns.”  

After her second marriage, Guinevere Jeanne Sinclair was styled as Countess of Midleton.²⁶ She died in 1978 aged 92 and the Ulster Museum purchased her so-called “Poiret” (or more likely, her Goncharova) cloak from an auction at Christies in 1986. This extraordinary cloak, bursting both with colour and with stories about the women connected to it, remains in the museum’s collection for the public to this day.