Dorothy Liebes | 10. I Don't Much Like Los Angeles

Liebes wrote to her friend, the ceramicist Beatrice Wood, that “I don’t much like Los Angeles to begin with.” But in the 1940s and ‘50s, Los Angeles very much liked her. William Haines and Frances Elkins used Liebes textiles in many of their commissions for Hollywood moguls and stars. Edward G. Robinson, Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper, Jack Warner, and George Cukor were among them. Liebes textiles were used in films including Lover Come Back, Adam’s Rib, and East Side, West Side, and she worked with costume designers Travis Banton, Edith Head, Adrian, and Bonnie Cashin. 

Liebes and Cashin

Her friendship with Cashin lasted the rest of her life, and produced Skirtings, Inc., a collection of Cashin-designed skirts in custom-woven Liebes fabrics. So close did they become that it was to Cashin that Liebes appealed to distribute her personal effects after her death. 

Skirtings, Inc. photo shoot

Liebes’s work in Southern California during and shortly after the war was crucial for keeping her studio afloat.

But it was to the east, away from her beloved home state, that Liebes ultimately turned, opening a design studio and relocating to New York City in the late 40s. She had been dividing her time between San Francisco and Manhattan for a decade, and all her yarn suppliers and the mills she increasingly relied on were on the east coast.  Also, her second husband, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Relman “Pat” Morin, was stationed in Washington D. C.  Once Pat secured a transfer in 1952, Liebes closed her San Francisco studio and they settled on East 66th Street in Manhattan where they lived for the rest of their lives.