Baseball Cap

The color of this baseball cap is inspired by The Menil Collection's signature "Menil Gray." The Menil’s main building was designed by architect Renzo Piano to have domestic proportions in response to its residential setting. Not only does the museum have a front lawn, but it is clad in modest cypress wood siding that echoes the materiality of the surrounding bungalow-style houses and garden apartments. Houston-based architect Howard Barnstone is thought to have encouraged museum cofounder Dominique de Menil to unify the neighborhood by painting the buildings on the museum's campus gray with white trim. Dominique agreed. She considered gray to be a comforting color that reminded her of the weathered stone and overcast skies of the small villages in her native France. Long-term tenants of the Menil neighborhood nicknamed the area “Doville,” an endearing reference to Dominique de Menil and a pun on the seaside town in Normandy.