In the 21st century we consider the total design of our lives, managing every detail from food packaging to MP3 player: We telegraph our lifestyle to the world, becoming the sum of our possessions. The early 20th-century French couturier Lucien Lelong (1889-1958) realized this drive to live a fully aestheticized life, extending style beyond mere dresses. He dedicated his career to designing the Lifestyle, and became one of the most influential figures in the world of fashion. Along the way, he recruited Christian Dior and Hubert de Givenchy, and dressed women including the Duchess of Windsor and Marlene Dietrich. A selection of Lelong’s sketches and couture ensembles, “Modern Master: Lucien Lelong, Couturier 1918-1948,” is currently on view at the Museum at FIT.

Lelong acknowledged the zippy new industrial era with slenderized designs incorporating what he termed the “kinetic line.” An attempt to keep the eye in constant motion through diagonal cuts and the elimination of superfluous detail, the kinetic line defined the modern woman’s crisp new spirit and freedom. However, Lelong’s streamlining mentality is missing in this show: I experienced a flea market deja vu standing among the unruly jumble of items. Vitrines displaying the various accoutrements Lelong designed to round out his Lifestyle ensembles – gloves, jewelry, handbags, and perfume (sold in Lelong-designed bottles) – were piled so confusingly the whole thing was almost a static wash.

Part of Lelong’s intelligence and subsequent success was the aggressive, American-style marketing of his brand. It’s Economics 101, with a dash of psychology: Tarnish the product and you devalue the brand’s overall name. To achieve this, Lelong micromanaged every detail of his cou ture house down to his double “L” logo. He hired an American public relations firm to promote and protect his brand, becoming one of the first couturiers to understand the importance of product placement and licensing.

It’s too bad the din of the exhibit prevents Lelong’s brand from achieving a fuller impact on the viewer. More is not more in this case, with too many photographs in too close proximity. The few stand-out pieces, like the reservedly playful “Co-Co-Ri-Co” beach pajamas (1932) or the elegant “Pensive” evening dress (1928), have a hard time breathing in the tight, awkward space.

Lucien Lelong’s effort to steep every aspect of daily life with aesthetics coincided with a larger cultural realization that the separation between life and art is porous. Industrialization allowed more products to permeate more households than ever before, bringing art to a broader spectrum of people. The growing middle-class demand for better-designed objects, from tableware to shoes, led to the mash-up of art with fashion. Today, the artist Takashi Murakami designs Louis Vuitton leather goods, and fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier mounts bread sculptures in museums. In Lelong’s own time, he was aware of Picasso’s designs for the Ballets Russes. Installed in FIT’s cavernous basement gallery is “Textiles From the Garden of Eden,” an exhibit of 55 historical and contemporary textile designs exploring motifs of idealized flora and fauna. In this transforming, almost romantic installation, fashion and art cohabitate.

Hanging like a forest of dreamy specters, each yard of textile gently pulses in a mix of serenity and riot. Take note of Zandra Rhodes’s patterned jambalaya “Balsas” (1987); Martin Leuthold’s ethereally expansive “Dress Fabric” (2005); and the wonderful juxtaposition of Paul Poiret’s “Juin” (1929) with Lucienne Day’s “Herb Antony” (1956). “Ulmus” (1956-58), a modern tree of life by Viola Grasten, is suspended from the ceiling, invoking involuntary reverence as it floats in the air. It is a Spartan black on white composition, full of jostling almondshaped leaves tightly packed into cartouches formed by the branches of a rising tree. Grasten wrings palpable spatial tension from a minimum of elements.

Though this show also suffers from installation issues – the entry room is a too-confusing hodgepodge – it is the more successful of the two exhibitions. When seen in conjunction with the display upstairs, this show highlights one possible outcome of the project Lelong began in 1918; namely, making an art out of life.

Through Saturday, April 15, the Museum at FIT, Seventh Avenue at 27th Street, free.