A passion for grace and beauty drives Sydney Carvin Milliken. Whether designing a fashion collection or creating a luxuriant terrace garden, clients are drawn to her innovative, imaginative sensibility and the practical discipline she brings to all her undertakings. She is a consummate artist, ever attentive to underlying structure, whether it be the “bones” of a garden or the drape, fit and line of a dress. Her love of history, costume for the theater and ballet, architecture and the arts inspires her approach to design.
SYDNEY CARVIN MILLIKEN began her artistic career in the world of high fashion as founder of the New York based company, Sydney Carvin Milliken, Ltd. Her collections gained international recognition for elegance and originality inspired by the European couturier tradition of Chanel, Schiaparelli, Vionnet and Balenciaga. SCM Ltd shows were extensively covered by the fashion press, both in the United States and abroad, and highlighted in Women’s Wear Daily cover pages and editorials. SCM Ltd designs were represented in the finest department and specialty stores throughout the U.S., Europe, Japan and South America.
After fifteen years as head of her own corporation, Sydney Carvin Milliken took leave of the world of fashion to study landscape design and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden. Using her own penthouse garden as experimental site she embarked on the beautification of New York City rooftops and penthouse terraces as an urban landscape designer. She has served on the Advisory Board and Board of Directors of The City Gardens Club of New York City, has taught seminars for landscape professionals at the New York Botanical Garden and launched the CGC Forum. The annual Forums have showcased some of the most prominent leaders in the environmental field. They are open to the public and have become a popular go to event for environmentally minded New Yorkers.