There are many holidays honoring motherhood and love, for example Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day but International Women’s Day is the only holiday that is celebrated around the world for the achievements of women, the success of suffrage and the civil rights movement. It is quite probably one of the most meaningful and significant holidays. It sounds like it is just about women, but it is not. This is also stated in the IWD 2022 campaign theme: Break the Bias. It is about breaking stereotypes, bias and discrimination based on gender, race and social class in communities, workplaces, schools and beyond. Everyone who agrees with the campaign can show their solidarity simply by taking a selfie with their arms crossed. It is such a peaceful and humane campaign. International Women’s Day is a good chance to think about human rights, basic rights, that belong to everyone, that should be equally respected but are often violated and infringed upon in real life. In particular, to Amorepacific, which cares deeply about the lives of women, their happiness and their beauty, International Women’s Day is more meaningful than any other holiday.

The Foundation Louis Vuitton held a special exhibition dedicated to Charlotte Perriand, titled Charlotte Perriand in Paris, France, from October 2019 to February 2020, which was a big hit. It tore apart the long-nurtured myth in the art world that an architecture designer's exhibition is less popular than an artist's exhibition. Charlotte Perriand is nothing less than a legend in architecture and furniture design. If you ask about how she destroyed gender stereotypes and became a revolution, I'd say it all began in 1972.

In 1927, Charlotte Perriand was only 24 years old when she graduated from Ecole de l’Union Centrale des Arts Décoratif. This school has been open to both men and women ever since its beginning in 1897 and it has played a great role in nurturing female designers and artisans. A member of the school board, Comtesse de Maupeou was particularly active in getting more women involved in interior design in the 1920s and 1930s. She published a newspaper for women and insisted that women should have the same educational opportunities as men. At that time, most people believed that a well-bred young lady ought to know how to sew and play the piano and get married to serve her husband and raise kids, but Perriand strode into Le Corbusier's studio where he worked with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret. Back then, Le Corbusier was 40 years old but was already renowned for his bold avant-garde design. Being such a great figure in the historically male-dominated architecture, why did he hire this young fresh-out-of-school woman? As you know, for college graduates without any work experience, entering a big-name architecture firm was as difficult if not more so than it is now.

The answer can be found in Bar Sous le Toit, which she created that same year for her graduation project. It was a recreation of a small section of her apartment, complete with an aluminum counter, chrome-plated tubular steel tools and a glass top table. Not only was Le Corbusier drawn to her work, but Robert Mallet-Stevens, one of the most influential figures in Art Deco saw the brilliance of Bar Sous le Toit and recommended her table for Villa Noailles, which he had built for collectors and art patrons Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles in the hills above Hyères, France. On a side note, Villa Noailles, designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens, is one of the most prominent pieces of modernist architecture built in the 1920s.

What Le Corbusier and Robert Mallet-Stevens saw in Bar Sous le Toit was more than furniture made of new materials, such as aluminum and chromed steel; they observed the birth of homme nouveau, a new generation that wholly accepts new technology and cherish ordinary materials in daily life instead of being tied down by old traditions. Indeed, she addressed the idea of homme nouveau, new man, in her words when she exhibited Bar Sous le Toit at Salon d'Automne in 1927. Her saying, “I understand by the New Man the type of individual who understands his age and lives it: the Airplane, the Ocean Liner and the Motor are at his service; Sport gives him health; His House is his resting place. Space, light, and the joy of creating and living in this century.”

She identified outside of the gender binary. She was nothing but an individual who loved parties and festivals where she'd greet others heartwarmingly and at the same time, would admire the early light of day on the mountain in quiet solitude. Her understanding of herself being a bona-fide individual who embraced her age and led the way to a new era was at the root of her movement as an independent designer. For 72 years, as a designer and an architect from 1927 when she first knocked on Le Corbusier's studio, up until her death in 1999, Charlotte Perriand had put homme nouveau at the heart of her every design.

Charlotte Perriand was the only female designer and architect who appeared in magazines in the 1920s and 1930s. She took a path no one else dared to, that no one else believed they could take. A brave pioneer, Charlotte Perriand fought against rigid stereotypes and in the end, left a lasting mark on the history of design.