Emilie Flöge (1874-1955), was a pioneering Austrian designer, whose work is often overshadowed by or credited to her life companion, the painter Gustave Klimt.
Emilie was Gustave's love and muse, though they were never married.
In 1904, Emilie and her sisters, Helene and Pauline, had opened a fashion salon, smartly outfitted by the Wiener Werkstatte, in Vienna's Casa Piccola. This entrepreneurial venture (unusual for women at the time) was necessitated by the financial decline of the once-prosperous Floge family
Emilie remained true to Klimt throughout his life and after his death maintaining a "Klimt room" in the salon premises after the Nazi Anschluss in 1938 forced its closure, Here she kept his easel and his massive cupboard housing his collection of ornamental gowns, his caftan like painter's smocks, and several hundred of his drawings.
