Dorothy Draper

Dorothy Draper

Dorothy Draper

Table of Contents

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Introduction

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Biography

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Neo-Baroque Style

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Textiles & Patterns

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Down to the Details

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Projects & Spaces

Camellia House {23} Greenbrier Hotel {25} Convair 880 {27} Chrysler {29} Delnor Hospital {31} Above: From the Hampshire House, a gallery outside the banquet rooms dubbed the Garden Lounge.

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Right: One of Draper’s fabrics, Jungle Leaves framing a photo from The Greenbrier

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Epilogue

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Contact

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Left: Interior designer James Amster welcomed the stars of the 1940s New York decorating world into his home.

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This Page: Celeberites attendeing the gala weekend party in 1948 for the reopening of the Greenbrier hotel, which Draper designed and decorated from top to bottom.

Introduction Dorothy Draper was born to a wealthy and privileged family in 1889, in one of the most exclusive communities in American history, Tuxedo Park. She was the first to “professionalize” the interior design industry by establishing, in 1923, the first interior design company in the United States, Dorothy Draper & Company, something that until then was unheard of, and also at a time when it was considered daring for a woman to go into business for herself.

As Carleton Varney writes in the biography of his mentor, The Draper Touch, she revolutionized the concept of “design” by breaking away from the historical “period room” styles that dominated the work of her predecessors and contemporaries. As an artist she was a modern, one of the first decorators of the breed, and a pioneer. She invented “Modern Baroque,” a style that had particular application to large public spaces and modern architecture. She craved public space, the canvas on which she did her most inspired work.

To Dorothy, public space represented a place for people to come and feel elevated in the presence of great beauty, where the senses could look and feel and absorb the meaning of a quality life. She used vibrant, “splashy” colors in never-before-seen combinations, such as aubergine and pink with a “splash” of chartreuse and a touch of turquoise blue, or, one of her favorite combinations – “dull” white and “shiny” black. Her signature “cabbage

rose” chintz, paired with bold stripes; her elaborate and ornate plaster designs and moldings – over doors, on walls and ceilings; her black and white checkered floors; her massive, paneled, lacquered, some framed with bolection or with elaborate plaster or intricate mirror frames – all contributed to dramatic design often referred to as “the Draper touch.”

Her confidence, as much as her taste, gave her the ability to take control of a hotel project in all aspects of design – right down to the designs for menus, matchbook covers and the staff uniforms. Her dictum was “if it looks right, it is right.”

In her day, Dorothy was the prima donna of the decorating business – her name was synonymous with decorating. She gave decorating advice in her regular column for Good Housekeeping Magazine, designed fabric lines for Schumacher, furniture for Ficks Reed, Heritage and, other than her hotel and restaurant decors, she also designed theaters, department stores, commercial establishments, private corporate offices, the interiors of jet planes, automobiles – even packaging for the cosmetics firm of Dorothy Gray – on top of her residential designs for the houses and apartments of prominent and very wealthy society figures. She also designed her very own exclusive fabrics for her clients. – such as her Romance & Rhododendrons and Fudge Apron which she used at the Greenbrier.

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Biography The young Dorothy Tuckerman Draper wasn’t ambitious or career-oriented when she moved to New York City in 1912. She was newlywed to Dr. George “Dan” Draper, a socially prominent physician whose patients included Franklin D. Roosevelt. Draper devoted herself to making a series of beautiful homes for her husband and three children.

In one townhouse, she moved the garden to the second story in order to expand the ground-floor living room so she could host big parties. With this “upside-down” house, she established her reputation for unconventional design. When the depression hit, her family’s fortune was greatly diminished, and she realized that her knack for decorating could be an important source of income. Furthermore, her husband had asked for a divorce and Draper found work to be therapeutic, a productive way to create an independent identity at the age of forty.

Draper’s social connections helped to launch her business. Real estate broker Douglas Elliman recommended her to decorate the lobby of the new Carlyle Hotel on her to transform some forlorn cold-water flats on Sutton Place into chic riverfront apartments.

Her ability to produce breathtaking results on time and on budget led the owners of the thirty-seven-story Hampshire House on Central Park South to hire her to decorate the entire hotel, the largest design job ever awarded to a woman. Hampshire House became not only an emblem of sophisticated Manhattan style. Throughout her career, real estate developers hired her to decorate their lobbies and model apartments to give their projects class and cachet.

The job that endeared her to more New Yorkers than anything other was the cafeteria-style restaurant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With its central sculpture pool and theatrical birdcage chandeliers, it was the most glamorous and democratic restaurant in Manhattan, and it was aptly nicknamed “the Dorotheum.” While World War II was being waged on two fronts, Draper was on a crusade to help middle-class 10

Americans live more graciously, stylishly, and happily. Inspired by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Draper had already developed a correspondence course in the mid 1930s called “Learn to Live,” which was billed as “a finishing school in the privacy of your own home.” She promised to “change your dull, weary life into a miracle of charm, glamor, and excitement.”

She came to national attention in 1939 with the publication of her first book, Decorating Is Fun! How to Be Your Own Decorator, which was as sensible as it was inspirational. The tone was encouraging, the ideas were feasible, and the options made women of all means feel that they could live in lovely surroundings. As America’s self-appointed doyenne of decorating, Draper was sought out by manufacturers who wanted her to endorse their products and appear in their advertisements. In 1941, she followed up with Entertaining Is Fun! How to Be a Popular Hostess, which approached the problem of entertaining at home from both a psychological and practical perspective. Instead of dictating to her readers, she gave them permission to entertain casually and encouraged them to have the most fun at their own parties.

Dorothy Draper became a household name when she began writing a monthly column for Good Housekeeping Studio for Living, and produced stories such as “10 Ideas for Decorating Playrooms” and “6 Ways to Do Your Mantel” and “Transform Your Room With 89 cents Draperies.” She gave her readers more than decorating tips: she shared with them her optimism. “Have you ever stopped to think what fun this business of living can be?” she wrote. “If you haven’t, and if you are one of those who insist upon believing that life is humdrum, grim and boring, then I’m afraid this department is not for you. For I don’t believe any such thing. I know that we can all free ourselves and live our lives fully, zestfully and joyfully!”

The iconic portrait by Yousuf Karsh was taken for a 1948 story in Coronet called “Women of Achievement.�

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Neo-Baroque Style

Below: The Hampshire House lobby Middle: Two white-plaster chandeliers.

Left from the Camellia House restaurant.

Right from the Arrowhead Springs resort.

Far Right: The Arrowhead Springs lounge

One of Draper’s unsung talents was knowing not only how to hire extraordinarily gifted architects and designers but how to manage them as well— her childhood surrounded by servants taught her how to give orders in a firm but respectful manner. These were the people who turned her wildest schemes into three-dimensional realities, and it was her associate Lester Grundy who championed the neo-baroque plaster motifs that became icons of the Draper style.

Grundy was an admirer of Grinling Gibbons (16481721), who was considered the world’s greatest wood-carver, and the firm found a Brooklyn family named Cinquinni who could make the overscale scroll-and-shell plasterwork that gave Draper’s rooms a surrealist air.

Many other elements contributed to the neo-baroque, or modern-baroque, look, which required bold curving forms, multifaceted ornamentation, and a synthesis of disparate elements. Draper’s genius was her flair for cremating over-the-top interiors without making them seem ostentatious. She considered her lack of formal 12

education to be an asset, for it gave her artistic freedom.

“You don’t have to know anything about a subject as long as you use common sense and imagination, plus enthusiasm!” she once told an interviewer. “I use all periods of design in my work, for, after all, decorative styles are simply indications of a manner of living. There are only three things to remember in decoration: comfort, color and a grand enough scale.”

Anyone who ever visited the Camellia House restaurant in Chicago, the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, Fefe’s Monte Carlo nightclub, or the Coty Salon in New York has indelible memories of these neo-baroque pieces de resistance.

Draper’s ability to create fantasies was not limited to her decorating. Her office produced hyperbolic press releases that breathlessly celebrated everything she did, and the trade journals were apparently glad

to use her words and photographs to fill their pages.

Thus, many of the contemporaneous descriptions of the Camellia House at Chicago’s Drake Hotel, which debuted in 1941, are as baroque as the plaster chandeliers and friezes she used to create a tropical atmosphere across the street from icy Lake Michigan. “To reach the Camellia House,” said the Western Hotel and Restaurant Reporter, “one crosses the lobby of the hotel and walks up wide white steps, across a terrace, roofed with an evening sky and balustrade above a harbor that twinkles with stars and far-off lights of ships-illusions of course, for the sky is paint and so is the sea….The moment you step inside you are impressed with the perfection of detail.

Furnishings are not ornate, they are just truly beautiful.” Liveried footmen would usher guests into the restaurant through massive dark-green doors trimmed in white.

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Left: The Fairmont Hotel Middle: A doorway from the Camellia House.

Far Right: The bar at Fefe’s Monte Carlo.

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Textiles & Patterns This Page (Clockwise): Lahala Tweed is reeds and palm fronds woven in a design of smart symmetry that is an ideal companion piece for other prints; This houndstooth fabric was used in the Greenbrier hotel; Maui Fern is perfect for slip-covers and draperies; Romance and Rhododendrons was Draper’s theme for the Greenbrier; Hula Fringe is a fifty-ich mainsail cloth.

Right: A room from the Greenbrier

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Left: Draper favored starburst shapes, such as this series used on a fabric for a client’s residence.

This Page (Clockwise): One of the jungle-themed fabrics that Draper designed for F. Schumacher & Co. was inspired by the Quitandinha resort; These swatches document the various fabrics she used at the Gideon Putnam;Island Fruit is a fifty-inch twill featuring pineapples and their swordlike leaves. It is perfect for extra long drawperies and large pieces of furniture; Sugar Cane Trellis is a bold but intricate design made for a large room, a small foyer, or one dramatic panel.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art restaurant nicknamed the “Dorotheum�

Down to the Details “The Draper touch” came into play with how innovative her choices were. Dorothy took part in every aspect of the spaces she designed. When it came to color choice, Dorothy was right there next to the painters, trying samples on the wall before designating the room ready to move forward. She would say “you can never judge a paint hue by the liquid color in the paint pot.

You must apply it to a wall, wait for the pain to dry, then decide.”

After she finished the Hampshire House, the newspapers raved about her work being “the first time in a hotel of this size, all the furnishings and accessories, servants’ uniforms, glassware and china, and other details have been designed by one person.” Dorothy always prided herself on going above and beyond to shape the entire experience one would have as they visited her spaces.

She believed that there “seems to be within all of us an innate yearning to be lifted momentarily out of our own lives into the realm of charm and make believe.”

That is why for every project she would insist on taking control of all the visuals for hotels, store, and apartment buildings—everything from matchbooks and menus to 20

stationery and signage to the sliding-glass shower doors and the buttons on the bellhops’ uniforms. Dorothy worked with Kroehler Furniture as well as Ficks Reed to come up with new color finishes and well-structured designs to add to her projects. Hating wood finishes, Dorothy’s designs are often covered in white or black lacquer. She was well known for the outlandish yet stylish lamps she created and the various fun patterns that covered her couches and chairs. Today you can still buy furniture inspired by her designs from Kindel Furniture Company of Grand Rapids Michigan. Together with Dorothy Company Co. they have been able to produce furniture that makes the Draper Touch available to everyone and keeps Draper’s spirit and style alive in the twenty-first century.

Opposite (Clockwise): Black-andwhite lamps with shiny pierced-brass shades electrified the lobby of the Mark Hopkins Hotel; A matchbox from The Barclay; Pink trays bordered in gilt made patients at the Naples Hospital feel like they were getting room serviece.

Below: Draper originally designed this chair for the Fairmont Hotel.

Right: All of the furniture in this image comes from Kindel’s Dorothy Draper collection for Varney & Sons.

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Left to right: The Camellia House; The Greenbrier Hotel; 24 The Conair 880; Chrysler; The Delnor Hospital.

Projects & Spaces

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Restaurant The walls of the Camellia House were hung with pink satin festooned with luscious red velvet. The chairs were upholstered in white leather with fuchsia marble veining. The draperies were in camellia shades, from the palest to the deepest rose. The “tropical baroque” white-plaster chandeliers were designed to look as though they were lit by real candles. The winsome floral menus helped Draper set a lighthearted mood for the restaurant. Draper had Syracuse China make the white service plates, which had green-and-gold borders and a large camellia at their centers. The cocktail napkin was part of the extensive archive Draper kept at her New York office as reference material for future projects.

Don’t be a slave to tradition or to your mother-in-law’s taste. Paint the ceiling, hang your own curtains, and fill the space with what you love. The first rule of decorating, she wrote in all caps, was “COURAGE,” followed by color, balance, “smart accessories” and comfort.

Draper was no modernist of the European school.

But she did prize light and brightness, and fun, stifling formality. Far better to live with the disapproval of a relative than the oppression of a dark and cluttered home.

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Left: Draper had Syracuse China make the white service plates, which had greenand-gold borders and a large camellia at their centers Above: The walls of the Camellia House were hung with pink satin festooned with luscious red velvet. The chairs were upholstered in white leather with fuchsia marble veining. The draperies were in camellia shades, from the palest to the deepest rose. The “tropical baroque� white-plaster chandeliers were designed to look as though they were lit by real candles.

Right: The winsome floral menus helped Draper set a lighthearted mood for the restaurant.

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Hotel When Draper was hired to decorate large, edlite resort hotels, she was expected to provide much more than her flawless color sense, well-furnished rooms, and smart bellmen’s uniforms. Her clients counted on her to infuse their hotels with charm and personality. “A hotel is nothing but bricks and mortar until such time as the breath of life is breathed into it by a carefully and deliberately cteated atmosphere,” she once wrothe.

Draper used decoration as a means to consciously manipulate people’s moods, and she was sincerely interested in human happiness. She understood that tourists had high exectations for their vacations, and she set about creating environments where it would be next to impossivle not to enjoy yourself. She wanted every moment to be pleasurable from lighting your cigarette with a colorful matchbook to waiting for an elevator on a comfortable bench. She set ambitious goals for herself and her staff, and never rested until she was satisfied that she had delivered on her promises. At the Greenbrier in West Virginia, she faced the daunting task of resurrecting a fabled Southern institution that had been completely stripped of its history and turned into an army hospital during World War II. 28

Opposite: One of Draper’s fabrics, Romance and Rhododendrons framing a photo of The Greenbrier’s Victorian Writing Room Left: On the cover of an illustrated menu, red velvet draperies frame the facade of the Greenbrier. The menu offered, among other things, green turtle soup amontillado, and baked Alaska.

When the Greenbrier hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, reopened in April 1948, anyone who still thought Dorothy Draper was merely a canny society decorator quickly realized that she was a visionary businesswoman whose company could tackle enormous, complex challenges. “It was not just the problem of redecorating a hotel,” said the Hotel Monthly in March 1949. “It was the job of bringing a great, sprawling, empty building located on a 6,500 acre estate back into the hotel, convention and resort business.” The budget was astronomical $4.2 million, and Draper’s office received a fee of $120,000. Before World Word II, the Greenbrier had been the premier resort for aristocratic Southerners. Known as “The Old White,” it was owned by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (most visitors came by overnight train). At the beginning of the war, the army requisitioned the hotel and used it to house diplomats of enemy countries. Later, the army bought the property and converted it into a hospital for wounded veterans, removing all of the hotel’s furnishings and replacing them with medical equipment. It took Dorothy Draper, Inc., just sixteen months to put the hotel back together from scratch. The grand reopening weekend was “the most lavish on-the-house houseparty of the century,” according to the May 10, 1948, issue of Life, which sent a photographer to take pictures of guests such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Bing Crosby, presidential advisor Clark Clifford, Vogue editor Margaret Case, and various Astors, Vanderbilts, and Biddles. It was reported that the $65,000 cost of the opening festivities “appears to have been well spent.

The Greenbrier is solidly booked well into 1949 at $17 to $65 a day.”

Draper’s office made many architectural changes to the hotel, turning the once-vast first floor into a series of “rooms” that flow one into the other. One of Draper’s pet theories about creating charm in large spaces was to introduce graceful arches and pillars to “create an illusion of well proportioned smaller spaces that are adequate to accommodate but not dwarf people or objects.” Large trees lit by special grow lights were placed to cast decorative shadows on the walls.

The Victorian Writing Room was the most traditional, old-world space in the hotel. The room fulfilled Draper’s goal of making guests feel that the Greenbrier was “really like a large country house where everything has been provided for the comfort, pleasure, convenience, and satisfaction of the beauty-conscious guests.” She understood this way of life because it was how she had grown up herself. In 1961, the Hotel Gazette said it “will go down in history as America’s most photographed room.”

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Airplane While interior designer Dorothy Draper is most well-known for baroque interiors featuring hallmarks of large floral patterns, plants, and vibrant colors, she adapted her vision to a range of spaces, including automobile and airplane interiors. This 1957 design for an airplane club area still evokes elements of the Draper fantasy but in a style more suited to an industrial, commercial space. Bold red chevrons on the seat upholstery add whimsy, while the shell forms of the white chairs echo the types of furniture that appeared in offices and waiting rooms throughout this period. As architects, increasingly designed interiors and often embraced minimalism as the standard style for commercial spaces, Draper’s design indicates her versatility as a designer in a changing market. At six feet tall, Draper famously valued comfortable spaces, and this design also demonstrates how a commodious and roomy interior could be created even within the small confines of an airplane.

The Convair 880 was the first jet airplane to challenge the supremacy of Boeing’s 707 model in the airline industry. When General Dynamics hired the firm of Dorothy Draper & Co., Inc. to design the plane’s interiors, they were undoubtedly hoping to use style to appeal to 1950s jet-setters in order to compete with Boeing. Draper and Co., Inc.’s design for the Convair 880 lavatory continues the sleek design of the club area, echoing the vibrant red in a plastic-laminate veneered interior that functioned efficiently and comfortably for consumer use.

Fabricated in San Diego by the now-defunct Convair division of General Dynamics from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, the four-engine Convair 880 revolutionized jet passenger travel in its day, bringing greater speed — 615 mph or 880 feet per second (which gave it its name). Luxury touches included passenger seats that reclined 38 degrees and sky blue overhead hat racks transformed into a galaxy with Draper’s planets and stars. She suggested these ideas of whimsical and spirited touches to make flying 30

more fun. She was especially concerned that the airplanes appeal to women, whose needs and tastes the make executives tended to ignore.

When General Dynamics hired Draper to style the interior of its next-generation jet plane, the Convair 880, the designer immediately used the commission to generate publicity for her office.

She lent her renderings to Harper’s Bazaar to use as a backdrop for a fashion spread in the January 1958 edition, opposite, and the magazine saluted her ingenuity in the accompanying text: “The collaboration between Convair’s technological skill and Mrs. Draper’s designing genius means not only a faster trip— but an infinitely more pleasant one,” the magazine predicted. “Mrs. Draper has scrapped the merely utilarian look for bold, fresh color; has eliminated the locked-up-in-a-closet feeling with an illusion of air and space. Seats are an illusion of air and space. Seats are not only comfortable, they’re brilliantly striped. That necessary evil, the pillow rack, no longer looks as though it were placed right on your head. And even seat buckles are gold plated.” Many of her ideas were overruled as too expensive.

As always, Draper hoped her ideas and designs would encourage people to feel uplifted and comfortable. She thought that airplane flights ought to be sociable and fun. She liked the idea that the Convair 880 would have a friendly, twelve-seat club compartment.

Though Draper often led journalists to believe she was designing all of the interiors, shew was only responsible for setting the “decorative theme through coordination of colors and selection of styling of the fabrics and other materials.” Harley Earl, Inc., a Michigan company, was hired to design the interior layout, including the seats, buffet, lounge, lavatories, and windows.

This Page: A color Convair 880 prototype framing a black & white photograph of the full-scale model of the airplane’s interior.

Opposite: One of Draper’s interior sketches

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This Page: Inside the Chrysler garage

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Opposite (left to right): Fabric swatches from the Chrysler Car Showroom; An outdoor photo from the Chrysler garage and blue swatch from the sky-blue chairs.

Car Showroom

Packard, which was then a leading automobile manufacturer, put her in its advertisements, hoping that her patrician presence and blue-chip reputation would suggest that its cars had class. Though the company was using a working woman to promote its products, its slogan was ironically chauvinistic: “It’s more than a carit’s a Packard: Ask the man who owns one.”

Businessmen across America hired Draper because she was an authority on color with the savvy of a marketing consultant. She called herself a “promotional stylist” and understood that profits more than aesthetics were the yardstick her commercial clients used to evaluate her work. Unlike traditional lady decorators, she didn’t wave her hands, nap her fingers, and specify colors based on whim or fashion; instead, her office approached each project methodically based on three basic principles, as she explained in an interview with Newsday in 1953: “(1) an intelligent analysis of the problem (2) how to put it into production as economically as possible with emphasis on function, and (3) a sense of good showmanship, the capacity for seeing things as a picture.” It was this vision that led two automobile makers, Chrysler and Packard, to hire Draper, even though she was already in her sixties, to give their cars a dose of sex appeal.

When Chrysler hired Draper to create the sales displays for a car show, they got a new spokeswoman along with expert design advice. “Emphasis on fashion has helped to bring color and gaiety into the most drab aspects of American life,” Draper told the Detroit Free Press, “and

the automotive industry, particularly Chrysler, has made great strides in catching the spirit of this trend in their new automobiles.”

In 1953, Chrysler asked Draper to transform a giant garage at one of the company’s Michigan plants into a colorful temporary showroom for the “Harmony on Wheels” presentation of the 1954 models. She painted the floors, hung bright-hued draperies, and brought in fresh flowers, which was an inventive way to market cars. “You don’t sell a commodity,” she told the women’s editor of the Detroit News, “you sell joy, gaiety, excitement. You aim at people’s hearts, not their minds.”

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Hospital “Hospitals need new packaging, a brand new dress that bespeaks health and happiness rather than sickness and suffering, hope instead of despair,” Draper said in 1941, after completing the Delnor Hospital in St. Charles, Illinois, for visionary philanthropists Dellora and Lester Norris. They had architect Edward H. Fairbanks design a small community hospital that resembled a rambling Williamsburg estate. Choosing Draper to decorate it was inspired because she had learned about holistic medicine from her ex-husband, and she set out to create an environment that would aid in the healing process.

“What is being done to create for the patient surroundings that make him want to live, that restore to him the old fight to regain his health?” she wondered, and then answered her own question by giving the world a light-hearted, high-spirited hospital. She draped the windows with bright cheerful chintz, lined the hallways with bold washable wallpapers, and ordered china that made nutritional rations look like meals one would find at a four-star hotel.

In the 1950s, she decorated another boutique hospital in Naples, Florida, and made it resemble a resort hotel as much as possible. She persuaded the architects to paint the exterior cerulean blue and white and to plant pink 34

oleanders outside the windows to provide a cheerful view for the patients. It was this vision of architecture as entertainment that made Draper a prophet. Her company motto was appropriately “Imagination functionally applied.”

Draper’s innovations were not merely decorative.

According to the trade magazine The Modern Hospital, the angled viewing window that kept visitors’ noses from pressing against the glass was her original idea. Each bassinet was dressed in generous folds of washable white fabric and tied with big, stiffly starched bows of pink or blue, depending upon the occupant. The white walls were stenciled with wide pale-blue ribbons knotted in a lattice of round pink roses, and the washable wallpaper in the corridor was dense with green leaves on a white background. “Although the babies cannot be expected to appreciate what the decorator’s art has done for them, their parents do,” said The Modern Hospital.

“The question remains whether the fond parents and adoring relatives standing in the hall looking through the tilted glass window are admiring the new arrival or Mrs. Draper’s decorations.”

Legend has it that Draper checked into a hospital for four days to get the patient’s perspective before designing Delnor. “She got up with the conviction that a hospital room’s decoration should logically be on the ceiling since that is where the invalid lies and stares at,” wrote journalist Janet Flanner in Harper’s Bazaar in 1941.

That experience also inspired her to create sliding bed

trays with a fold-up mirror and hidden compartments so a woman could apply makeup or a man could shave without getting out of bed.

Draper’s décor made patients at Delnor feel like guests at a luxury resort. The chintz valance— a strip of fabric draped over a pole at the top of the window and caught back at each side with four-inch white disks—matched the slip-covered armchair. “You just can’t beat slip covers for giving that friendly air hospitals need so desperately,” she said. Notice the footstool under the bed so that patients could sit in the chair and put their feet up.

The washable white throw rug was meant to make the room feel more cozy.

The furniture was described as “bleached oatmeal.”

Because the hospital was designed when smoking was allowed everywhere, each room included a large crystal ashtray with chic matchbooks printed with the hospital’s logo. “You won’t be the first one to slip one into your pocket,” wrote Raymond P. Sloan in his article about Delnor. “And what could be better publicity for the hospital!” Or for Dorothy Draper, Inc.?

Opposite (top to bottom): A collage of newspaper clippings following the launch of the Delnor Hospital; The fish-design fabric that was specially printed for the hospital on white cretonne for easily washible curtains.

This Page: One of Draper’s illustrations for the Delnor Hospital.

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This Page: Draper’s photo in Look 1952, posing with other leading textile designers and the same camp chair covered in their signature fabrics.

Opposite: A portrait of Draper.

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Draper’s fame was hard-earned and based on her originality as a stylist and her daring as a businesswoman. She shocked the design world in 1937, when she was hired to decorate the thirty-seven-story Hampshire House apartment hotel on Central Park South in New York City. She insisted on taking control of every aspect of the project from the menus and matchbooks to the sliding-glass shower doors in the bathrooms to the buttons on the bellhops’ uniforms—and made sure her company was credited in the hotel’s advertising.

She created vivid, theatrical, and cheerful interiors that charmed, amused, and delighted residents, guests, and press. The combination of bold checkerboard floors, surrealistic white plasterwork, and overblown chintz fabrics was exhilaratingly wild.

The look dubbed “modern baroque’ and established Draper’s reputation for audaciousness. “She uses logic in her own way and not as a limitation,” wrote Janet Flanner in Harper’s Bazaar in 1941. “Mrs. Draper has fearlessly let herself go, has stood art, nature, history, and geography on their ears when necessary in order to obtain from them her special personal refreshing effects.”

While projects like hospitals allowed her to put her philosophies into practice (she believed that hospitals should focus on health and happiness rather than illness and suffering) she understood that for most of her commercial clients decorating was merely a means to attract more business and boost sales. Whenever possible, her

press releases and brochures cited how her designs had led to increased profits.

Draper’s media savvy was remarkable. She typically sent out eight-by-ten glossy photographs of her work along with press releases detailing her many accomplishments on each job, and newspapers and trade journals often printed them verbatim. She created her own mythology, and it kept clients and consumers curious. She would travel to unglamorous spots like Toledo, Ohio, or Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to make personal appearance that would spread her fame. Journalists seemed to adore her. “She radiates good health and good cheer, is as handsome and crisp in personal appearance as an early spring garden,” twinkling gray-green eyes, dark hair and an endearing let’s-have-a-cup-of-tea smile.”

Epilogue

Draper’s persona, however, was the most dazzling effect in any space. She overpowered any room. Conversations with her were always a little disconcerting. She heard only what she wanted to hear and then tuned out. Draper’s health deteriorated during the sixties. Everyone in the office was concerned and often uncomfortable when she was unable to recall what had been decided for this or that job. In 1963, she relinquished the chairmanship of Dorothy Draper, Inc., and some of her stock. They are the oldest continuously operating design and decorating firm in America. Dorothy Draper herself is an icon, credited with having made decorating a profession.

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Contact

Offices and Showrooms New York – Design Headquarters 60 East 56th Street New York, NY 10022 Tel: (212)758-2810 Fax: (212)759-0739 Email: newyork@dorothydraper.com

London – Design Office

31 South Audley Street London Tel: +44 20 7946 0288 Email: london@dorothydraper.com

The Greenbrier Hotel

300 West Main Street White Sulphur Springs, WV 24986 Tel: (304) 536-1110 Email: greenbrier@dorothydraper.com

Palm Beach

5715 Georgia Avenue West Palm Beach, FL 33405 Tel: (561) 585-1855 Email Shop: palmbeach@carletonvarney.com Email F&W: palmbeach@DorothyDraperFW.com

Above: The title of Draper’s groundbreaking 1939 book, Decorating Is Fun!

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Right: Women posing in a model room at the LaSalle & Koch Co. department store.

Swatchbooks To Order:

Tel: (212)758-2810 Web: dorothydraper.com/swatchbooks Email: swatchbooks@dorothydraper.com

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