Susan Unger

Susan Unger is a richly talented designer and artist. Like me, she has a 50+ year relationship with this beautiful island of Menorca. In a stroke of serendipity, I was introduced to Susan as a friend-of-a-friend of one of our 2023 participants. It sounds a bit much to follow, but the delight is in knowing how interconnected the creative spirit is! How fabulous to meet a new friend on this island.

I visited Susan in her incredible home in Alaoir, and am excited to offer one of our workshops in her studio space there. It’s a magical space with an old threshing circle where she dyed and dried the fabric she used in her fashion line. I cannot wait to share this artist and her studio-home with you all!

The Mediterranean has long been the wellspring of Susan Unger’s inspirations. For over 50 years she has made the Island of Menorca her home. The nature around her—the unspoiled countryside, the beaches, the mysterious ruins - all informed her designs. Unger has the gift for transforming elements from Nature, from Art, from Architecture into stunningly original fabrics for fashion and home furnishings. Like Mariano Fortuny, one of her great inspirations, Unger has developed a rare brand of artisan-couture. Her work isn’t so much about fashion, as about a sophisticated, yet easy approach to living. In fact it was her decision to take a different approach to life that led Unger to her design vocation. After graduating from Bennington College with a philosophy degree in 1971, Unger, who grew up in rural Pennsylvania, went off to Europe to see first hand the great art works she had studied. By a stroke of fate, she ended up spending the winter visiting a friend’s family in Menorca. She was captivated by its striking, varied landscape — lush forests, blasted moonscape rocks and the megaliths and ruins of its ancient settlements. Unger decided to stay on and steep in the Mediterranean culture which had fostered so much extraordinary art. Before long, she was making it herself. Unger’s artistic metier became patterns on fabrics. She developed her own silk-screen process, combining printing with dying, in order to create shimmering designs inspired by what she saw around her.

“All my ideas come from nature,” she says. It could be a feather, a cloud, a blade of grass, a dragonfly.” she mixed the pigments and the dyes herself, developing a distinctive palette of deep earth and jewel tones, often highlighted with metallic paints. From these printed fabrics, she fashioned simple, easy to wear clothing. In 1975 Barcelona experienced a creative explosion, and Unger was part of that Renaissance.

Over years, she dressed Maria del Mar Bonet, Lluis Llach, and many luminaries from political and cultural worlds. Unger also participated in the Cibeles runway shows in Madrid, Neo Moda in Milan, and in 1988 she opened a shop in the trendy Mercado Puerto de Toledo. However, her best retail partners in Spain were in Menorca and Barcelona: stores called “I DO”. Together with Unger, they made the brand synonymous with Menorca. The frenzied whirl of creative Madrid and Barcelona did not permanently lure Unger away from her island home, however. Her roots in Menorca only grew deeper. she renovated a rambling old farmhouse near Alaior, and turned the barn into her workshop. She trained a staff of Menorcan women in her silkscreening technique, who then realised her designs.

The threshing circle became a place for Unger to paint and dry freshly screened fabrics. She found that Menorca’s isolation and serenity enriched her work. Intellectually curious a spiritual seeker, she was able there to “distill the archetypes of thought” into a sensual and visual language. In 1991, she teamed up with the choreographer Nacho Duato to design costumes for his internationally acclaimed ballet DUENDE for the Nederlans Dans Company. The experience thrilled her. “It felt like the Ballets Russe of old,” recalls Unger. “The ethereal combination of movement, light, color, and fabric was seductive.” this ballet was later produced by ballet companies all over the world, using Unger’s costumes.

Meanwhile Unger’s fashion business flourished. Her clothing was being sold in more than 50 boutiques throughout Europe. She was designing and fabricating scarves for Romeo Gigli and fabrics for Donna Karan. Eager to explore new horizons, in 1994 Unger moved to New York, where she set up a studio and workshop. Before long, her clothing was being featured in the windows of Bendel’s and Bergdorf Goodman, and other high-end shops and department stores. She developed a celebrity following including Uma Thurman, Glenn Close, Carly Simon, and Diane Sawyer.

In 1997 Unger expanded into home furnishings. Recalling the natural surroundings of her Mediterranean home, she tightened her focus on organic forms. She also studied Feng Shui and the color theories. Out of these investigations came a collection of bedding and home accessories in printed velvet, charmeuse, and transparent organza that was at once sumptuous in its tones and textures and minimalist in its forms.Unger’s Home Collections became a best seller at New York’s ABC Carpet and Home. A set adorns the bed of Charlotte in the HBO series, Sex and the City. From her own fashion fabrics and furnishing business in Manhattan, Unger was hired as design director of STUDIO, JCPenney’s modern lifestyle brand. Traveling to China, India, Turkey to visit factories of home furnishings, she worked with a team of designers to build product in the global arena for the middle-America clientele. It was the exact opposite of what she had done in her own company, and she earned what she calls “a master’s degree in global production and marketplace”.

In 2013, with her daughter, Ona Villier, Unger designed and produced a collection of hand bags called BiniChic. They were made in Ciudadella and shipped to clients in the US. BiniChic was also a lifestyle blog, reflecting a point of view that informed Susan’s life and work. Now retired, Unger spends long periods in Menorca, still feeling deeply centered in her unspoiled countryside, her beaches, her mysterious ruins that were so seductive 50 years ago. Unger sees all her designs as part of a greater whole. “As a spiritual seeker, I’ve tried in my work to communicate my discoveries throughout the colors and forms of Nature and archetypal motifs,” she says. “In this way, I hope to enrich people’s lives and bring a deeper dimension to their environments.”