Nancy Vincent McClelland

Nancy Vincent McClelland (1877–1959) was the first female president of the first US national association of interior designers, the American Institute of Interior Decorators (A.I.I.D), which is now called the American Society of Interior Designers (A.S.I.D.), and was one of the first women ever to enter the interior decorator field. McClelland was also an expert on the European/American antiques. She was a writer for interior journals such as: Collier's, Country Life, House Beautiful, and House and Garden. She was an expert on wallpaper and the American Neoclassical Designer Duncan Phyfe. She received several rewards for her work. Being multilingual gave her the opportunity to be internationally active and to be known beyond the US as a writer, speaker, interior decorator, wallpaper designer, and collector of antique furniture. She traveled widely and met figures of the time such as Picasso.

Nancy McClelland was working on developing the professionalization of the profession, interior designer because it was not seen as a career choice. Instead, she was an interior decorator, particularly one who was an expert in antiques and wallpapers of different time periods. Her work dealt with both the current trends of her time period and also restoring the grand interiors of historic buildings making her style related historicism. She argued that one cannot simply ornament a space to be an interior decorator, but rather need more education to require a specific degree to be considered a professional. McClelland became one of the people that pushed the field of interior decoration to be professionalized.

McClelland was born in a middle-class family of Methodist ministers in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1877. In 1897, she received of a Bachelor of Arts in Latin and English from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and received the key upon graduating. With her studies, she became multilingual and spoke French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

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