Dressed: The History of Fashion · Dressed Media

Sonia Delaunay: The Art of Everything, part II, an interview with Waleria Dorogova (Dressed Classic)

March 6, 2026·32 min·2 clips

Sonia Delaunay's 1926 color fashion film used moving mannequins and color backgrounds to demonstrate her groundbreaking color theory.

Delaunay keeps widening the frame. The conversation picks up with Cassidy Zachary and April Callahan placing Sonia Delaunay across art, interiors, fashion, and textile design, without letting the intro linger too long. Once the interview begins, the liveliest thread is how Delaunay thought about promotion, memory, and materials in her later years. A film turns out to matter more than expected. The guest describes a 1972 project made from moving stills of Delaunay's masterpieces, shot in Paris and New York, then edited with Delaunay's own recorded commentary and music she loved. She was in her late eighties, and the episode treats the film less like a footnote than like another tool she understood and used. April then slows down over the tapestries, asking for more because the medium sits right between painting, interiors, fashion, and textile history. The answer takes its time in a good way. The guest connects tapestry to a broader avant-garde circle that included Picasso, Le Corbusier, and Fernand Leger, and brings in Marie Cuttoli, Sonia's friend and a pioneer in the 1930s tapestry revival. The timing matters here. Delaunay had those connections, but she did not have tapestries made from her sketches in the 1930s, even though she did make rugs and carpets. The tapestry work came later. By the late 1950s she was working with workshops, and in the 1960s the French state commissioned her. Cassidy and April give the guest room, which suits the subject. Delaunay's career sounds less like a neat timeline than a long habit of testing what color, surface, and design could do next. The ending stays personal too, with the hosts moving back toward listener life and Paris tour planning, so the scholarship feels alive rather than sealed behind glass.

As heard by us

A focused look at how Delaunay extended her art into film and tapestry.

The second part of Dressed's Sonia Delaunay investigation follows her late-career movement across painting, fashion, textiles, interiors, film, and tapestry.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You get a fashion-history rabbit hole through Sonia Delaunay's 1972 film moment and her late-life tapestries.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Dressed: The History of Fashion