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Established in 2000, the Bonnie Cashin Archive is among the most significant fashion collections in the world. It is owned in its entirety by Cashin’s heir and biographer, Dr. Stephanie Lake, the foremost expert on Cashin’s life and career. Cashin referred to her as her “little sister.”
Consisting of thousands of items, the Archive charts Cashin’s near-century of life in design and as a “mother” of American sportswear. From iconic garments to her own reference library, personal photographs, voice recordings, design illustrations, fine art, diaries, textile samples, and press archive, the collection is singular in its depth and range.
As described by legendary fashion editor Eugenia Sheppard in 1963, “Bonnie Cashin isn’t just fashion. She has become a cult.” Jonathan Adler’s declaration “I worship at the altar of Bonnie Cashin,” and his “Ten Commandments of Cashinism” (written as the foreword for Lake’s Cashin monograph) define the spirit of providing access and exploration into this unparalleled collection.
The fifth scholar in the world to earn a PhD in the History of Decorative Arts, Design and Material Culture (Bard Graduate Center), Lake’s interest in Cashin’s work began during her graduate studies and while working as a researcher for Sotheby’s Fashion Department. As first documented by The New York Times and WWD, a classic “New York story” and fashion fairy tale ensued.
When word of Lake’s academic intention to “redress historical neglect” of Cashin’s career reached the designer, the then-student was invited to tea at Cashin’s iconic U.N. Plaza Apartment. The rapport between the two was such that Cashin granted unprecedented and exclusive access to Lake. She became the subject of Lake’s master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation.
Until Cashin’s death in 2000, the two spent their time together discussing and documenting Cashin’s career, including her wishes for her personal archive and design legacy. Upon her passing, Lake was told "Bonnie wanted you to have everything." While still a student, Lake curated the first major retrospective of Cashin’s work, “Bonnie Cashin: Practical Dreamer,” (FIT) and worked across the globe and with regional sites within the U.S. on exhibitions of Cashin’s designs, including shows in Tokyo with Coach (Mitsukoshi) and for the Goldstein Gallery for its 25th anniversary.
Cashin's executors appointed Lake to the role of chief adviser to Cashin’s estate, including all aspects of the estate’s philanthropic giving, Lake created a multi-million dollar network of endowed gifts in Cashin’s name. As stipulated by Lake and detailed in her mission statements, these include the Bonnie Cashin Fund at the New York Community Trust, The Bonnie Cashin Research and Travel Grant at the Bard Graduate Center, and The Bonnie Cashin Memorial Fund at FIT. At UCLA, Lake structured a $1.5 million dollar endowment for The Bonnie Cashin Lecture Series as well as the care and exhibition of Cashin’s professional papers. Lake identified and donated some 7,000 items to their Department of Special Collections as a companion collection to her personal archive. She served as UCLA's curator and museum scientist in charge, creating the open source Cashin database in use today. Lake also wrote and presided over the installation of Bonnie Cashin’s marker on New York’s Fashion Walk of Fame and established the now-defunct Bonnie Cashin Foundation where she served as Creative Director.
Lake published the definitive monograph on Cashin’s life and work, “Bonnie Cashin: Chic is Where You Find it.” (Rizzoli) and works with major museums and educational institutions to facilitate research and archival loans, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, The Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. Projects in development include expansive digital archival access and immersive experiences with Jonathan Adler, Simon Doonan, Ruben Toledo, Isaac Mizrahi, Beverly Johnson, Cameron Silver, Liz Goldwyn, Jeffrey Banks, John Tiffany, Nena Ivon, and Cashin’s family attached, charting a traveling Cashin exhibition throughout the U.S., documenting Cashin's Armenian history in California, and considering the opening of a public space for the Archive as an American fashion destination. Lake promotes inclusion of Cashin’s work in international scholarship and exhibitions, editorial coverage, post-secondary course curriculum, public lectures, and actively shares archival material on numerous social media platforms, including the Instagram account “BonnieCashinArchive.”
Lake collaborates with notables in diverse fields, providing exclusive access to the Archive as source material and inspiration for new work, such as Olivia Cheng's patterning of Cashin garments for her Dauphinette collections. In this, Lake expands her stewardship of Cashin’s legacy to not only celebrate the significance of Cashin’s contributions to the design world throughout her career, but to also highlight Cashin’s singular role as a muse to generations of designers, and secure her place as a national treasure, an honor ascribed to her by legendary photographer Bill Cunningham.
“Bonnie Cashin in Review: History and the Archive,” produced by Ignite Models / Envision, filmed by Gabe Hostetler / Young Vision Films, Art Directed by John Mark, filmed at the Lake residence.
Collection Tours
Archive Tours: Overview
The Lake Family Collection presents an exclusive, curator-led experience dedicated to the work of Bonnie Cashin—a pioneering force in American sportswear whose innovations continue to shape modern fashion.
This private archive houses a deeply researched and meticulously preserved body of work, widely regarded among fashion insiders as one of the most significant single-designer collections in private hands.
Designed for collectors, designers, and cultural patrons, this experience offers rare intellectual and physical access to Cashin’s legacy.
Visit Bonnie Cashin’s “Secret Laboratory”
The Lake family’s ownership of the Bonnie Cashin Archive is rare not simply because of its significance and scale, but because of its totality. It is shaped by inheritance, not collection or purchase.
Most major fashion archives are dispersed. Garments are accessioned by museums; sketches and correspondence are absorbed into research libraries; personal effects vanish into private markets; furniture and artworks are separated from the creative record. What survives is often selective, curated through the lens of institutional priorities or market value. The result, however invaluable, is fragmentary.
By contrast, the Lake’s archive remains remarkably intact and holistic. It encompasses not only finished designs, prototypes, and ephemera from Cashin’s groundbreaking career, but also the furnishings, artworks, tools, textiles, fine art, and domestic objects that shaped her aesthetic vocabulary. It preserves the continuum between life and work—between studio and home—revealing that for Cashin there was no meaningful separation between design practice and lived experience.
This integrity is extraordinarily uncommon in fashion history. Designers of Cashin’s stature—whose innovations in American sportswear, modular dressing, and hardware transformed twentieth-century fashion—are typically represented through isolated masterpieces. Here, however, one encounters the full material culture of a modernist life: the objects she collected, the spaces she inhabited, the systems she devised, the rituals she cultivated. It is an archive of process as much as product.
Equally rare is its custodial model. Rather than entering an institutional repository, this archive endures within a private family setting, where scholarship, stewardship, and daily life intersect. It is housed and selectively shared, just as Cashin lived and worked. Without commercial spaces or an office setting, Cashin created within her own “secret laboratories,” the terms she gave to the residential spaces used for all aspects of life and work, sometimes open to special guests and to the press.
The Lake collection is neither static nor commodified; it is lived with, studied, and carefully preserved as an integrated cultural inheritance. That intimacy allows for a depth of interpretation unavailable in any institutional setting, as Cashin herself wished.
The Experience
Duration: 2.0-4.0 hours
Guests: Limited to 2–6 participants
Format: Private, appointment-only
Each visit is guided by Dr. Stephanie Lake, Bonnie Cashin’s sole heir and author of Bonnie Cashin: Chic is Where You Find It (Rizzoli). Tours unfold as an immersive tour, viewing objects collected by and art created by Cashin including all monograph content.
Objects on permanent display within a series of intimate spaces and dedicated archival rooms offer the exclusive opportunity to view the material culture of Cashin’s life and work, customized to the interests of each guest.
Lake Residence, Tour Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8F48Kj6HG0
Bonnie Cashin: Chic is Where You Find It: https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847848058/
Access Levels
Collector Access
Full guided experience and curated archive viewing
Starting at $500 per guest (2 hours; each additional hour $150 per guest)
Tour Summary: house tour includes all Bonnie Cashin objects, art, and ephemera on view. Viewing of Archive rooms (no white glove handling)
Curatorial Access
Full guided experience, curated archive viewing
Guest selection of individual archival object viewing with white glove handling (five objects per tour)
Starting at $1,200 per guest (3 hours; each additional hour $150 per guest, each additional request for single object viewing and white glove handling upon request).
Tour summary: house tour includes all Bonnie Cashin objects, art, and ephemera on view. Viewing of Archive rooms, selection of white-glove handling (5 objects) and extended discussion
Patron Access
Full guided experience, curated archive viewing
Guest selection of individual archival object viewing with white glove handling (10 objects per tour), film Audio screening, post-visit archival dossier
Starting at $3,500 per guest. (up to 4 hours, each additional hour $150 per guest, each additional request for single object viewing and white glove handling upon request)
Tour summary: house tour includes all Bonnie Cashin objects, art, and ephemera on view. Viewing of Archive rooms, selection of white-glove handling (10 objects), extended discussion, screening of Cashin film and audio interviews, electronic copy of Bonnie Cashin: Chic is Where You Find It, post-visit archival dossier.
By Request and Invitation Only
Due to the nature of the collection and preservation standards, access is strictly limited.
To inquire or request consideration, private referrals are preferred.
A Singular Cultural Opportunity
As one of the world's greatest single-designer archives in private hands, Lake Family Collection offers an experience defined by rarity, scholarship, and intimacy.
Please contact us for request and review.
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