WAS SHE INFLEXIBLE AND HEADSTRONG?? MOST ASSUREDLY!
HER MANTRA——
“IF I LIKE IT, IT’S RIGHT, IF I DON’T, IT ISN’T!”
DOROTHY was,———to the “manner born,” accustomed to grand houses, servants to answer to her every need, and an endless supply of money; best known as wealth and privilege. From both her mother’s and her father’s side——her ancestors and relatives were the first settlers in our American frontier(1630)——including, a long list of statesmen and a signee of the Declaration of Independence. And another great, great Grandfather owned 75 clipper ships in Newport Harbor that carried valuable merchandise to and from the Orient.
BLUE CHIP
PLEASE MEET————DOROTHY DRAPER!
But firstly——there was a bit of a glitch——a galumph and a garump. An aberrant intervening began at age twelve and kept going into her teen age years. Years that would achingly loom for this little young lady!
Remember Alice in Wonderland when Alice’s life became “Curiouser and curiouser”? Because at age 12, her life took on Alice’s “curiouser” gauntlet. Did she step through the looking glass to become Alice in Wonderland? She did!
Dorothy’s mirror showed a fledgling adolescent who kept growing taller and taller——taller than all the boys and girls in that small super upper crust enclave of Tuxedo Park in 1901 where she lived. Finally, after four long years during a family dinner party, she heard a man at a nearby table, exclaim “La jeune fille——queue jolie,” “What a good-looking and graceful young girl!” Dorothy finally emerged as a lovely statuesque 5’9” young woman. And, she had learned to glide into a room making every entrance an occasion, as her mother did.
Heads turned!
Hence forward, her indomitable and invincible spirit would carry her through.
Dorothy married handsome, tall, and witty Doctor Dan Draper from the Draper bluestocking family of clever, well-read, and highly intellectual women and men. Dan had been “a man about town” and their early years of marriage were spent socializing abroad in Europe and the U.S.
It was also a time when she unknowingly had a glimpse into her future! (Dorothy decorated Dan’s bedroom in a fabric that cost “twenty cents a yard,”——with an unheard of fabric in her set, “blue denim!” Blue denim would not become popular until the early 1950ties.) This was 1912!
Dan Draper and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were school friends, as were their wives, sharing many youthful events. As Dan’s prominence and brilliance rose, he began spending more and more time away from home embracing the study of exceptional diseases, one of them being poliomyelitis. (Dan became President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s personal Doctor at the onset and throughout his struggles with polio.) In the future he would also be credited as being the father of psychosomatic medicine after studying in Zurich with Dr. Carl Jung, the disciple of Freud.
Despite the fact that she and Dan had three children, Dorothy had unlimited free time. A live-in nanny resided with the children exclusively. Dorothy found she loved decorating their home. Visiting friends and guests were enchanted with her decorations——offering to buy their house with her furnishings and move right in——no changes. The Draper’s sold and moved down the street to a larger house. Guess what! Someone once again made a bid for their house and moving was becoming a pattern of life.
In the course of time, Dan Draper spent more time at his lab and completely lost interest in a social or home life with Dorothy.
At first decorating homes did keep Dorothy engaged, but she detested pleasing her client’s taste——and was ecstatic when asked to design a new museum in Greenwich Village. The goal she set for herself was to perk up and spice up museum decor——sooo——Dorothy designed vibrant sapphire blue satin curtains lined with a new shade——“chartreuse” as the linings. The equally colorful pull cords were bright scarlet.
It was a splendid accomplishment for this nouveau decorator!
Unprecedented design foresight was anchored deeply in Dorothy’s design DNA. She splashed onto the scene with a bright and effervescent color palette that evoked areas of nature, banishing beige and brown from her palette. calling them “gravy” colors.
In the twenties, Dorothy was a pioneer in the use of oversized flowers, (cabbage rose chintz)———bold contrasts and graphic black and white marble floors pushing and bending the boundaries of safe choices into more daring personalized interiors. Her signature colors were dark green, dead white and scarlet with a sometimes nod at turquoise and fuchsia. AND, she never cared about the opinion of others——with no training, she savored her own decorating taste!
In the 1930ties, she was given a marvelous commission——the lobby of the Carlyle Hotel.
Her lobby floor was of black and white marble while using images of a Holy Roman Empire theme. With dramatic friezes of horsemen, gladiators, runners and bust of Roman heroes, satin draperies and circular banquets softening the look, the lobby was a standout and would continue to be for multiple years. The drama was complete and the Carlyle did not renovate the lobby for years.
BREAKING THE MOLD!
REALITY!
Dan, after 17 years of marriage asked for a divorce. It was unexpected. She could not believe Dan preferred another woman and one twenty years younger. Dorothy was deeply hurt even though she had been devoting almost complete time to her own career. They had been a charismatic couple, rich, photogenic and popular. A beautiful family that tangibly had begun to lead separate lives. Divorce terrified her and in her mind meant that she was now a social pariah…
AND MORE! Equally heart rendering for Dorothy was the confluence of disastrous monetary events that also put her at the epicenter of shocking losses. She could not fathom that her early life style would change. She deserved a rich, monied married life——her birthright was carved in stone. She was convinced she had been promised to be rich forever, but then…
——1929———— IN A SPLIT SECOND——HER MONEY WAS KAPOOT!
DOROTHY WAS RELATIVELY “POOR”!
A feeling of darkness led to a point where she felt she couldn’t cope but she would and did so. Impelled to seek a form of forceful mental strength, Dorothy sought and found a successful mentor. His teachings of self-belief would virtually take her to to a world of decorating stardom. With fervor and zeal, Dorothy studied and accepted the visualization techniques of Norman Vincent Peale. (Followers were to “overcome their fears because nothing consumed energy like fear.”)
TIME TO SOAR, DOROTHY——
CHUTZPAH!
Destiny was omnipresent when another developer admired her talent, initiative, energy and imagination on the Hotel Carlyle lobby. He hired Dorothy to resuscitate a block of dreary cold-water tenement flats he owned on Sutton Place. The neighborhood was not desirable and she was given a very small budget for this “address of nobodies.” There was one positive——an excellent river view!
It was said that she paced up and down this Sutton Place street and then the spark of an idea surfaced that would bestow mega attention on Dorothy and that dreary urban landscape. Her idea was to make the building disappear!——
FROM TENEMENT FLATS TO IN-DEMAND LUXURY APARTMENTS
DOROTHY painted all the flats JET BLACK!
The windows, fire escapes and balconies were a flat white and for individuality each and every door was painted a different bright color. They became sought-after luxury apartments. And it increased her power two-fold——she got society to move to an unfashionable neighborhood!
When Dorothy began her popular business in 1925 she believed anyone could have her look of “Great Beauty” by eliminating clutter, conspicuous antiques, and matching furniture ensembles. She called her style,
“Modern Baroque!”
She needed to create new opportunities as hardship still continued to overshadow life with the market’s 1929 financial wreckage. She found balance by moving into one of her own newly designed Sutton Place flats with her third child, Penelope who was given the one and only bedroom while Dorothy slept on the sofa.
Dorothy painted everything in that small scale apartment sky blue——walls, moldings, ceilings, furniture, picture frames and even a tall mahogany secretary along with the same blue color draperies. She wrote an article for magazines on how she had made their small apartment look larger sharing details and how-to’s——Vogue and Harper’s photographed it and included Penelope’s dog.
The woman’s magazine Good Housekeeping recruited Dorothy to write a monthly column focusing on affordable ideas for making homes comfortable.
Boundless ambition led her to write books on self-decorating and entertaining for middle class housewives as she continued to remodel her life into one of positivity.
Side note: I have a copy of this 1939 book “Decorating Is Fun” with 245 pages filled with well-thought out directions and prudent meticulous advice for that time period. Following ex:
She adored mixing styles and periods in her own haphazard manner and loved large black and white marble floor tile with walls of white plaster appliques using grand scroll and shell motifs——her plasterwork, shiny black patent leather walls, striped wall paper walls so wide they had to be stenciled on, art deco, chintz, and her love of the baroque were her forte.
Her punched-up color wheel combined grass green, scarlet, wine, watermelon, coral, turquoise and yellow. Always providing the piece de resistance in her eyes———lots of gleaming white and black!
She did not like small men throughout her whole life, plus she did not like wood——painting it white, also she abhorred posts, pillars, spindles, wainscoting, panels, spandrels, shutters, sconces, molding, beading and fretwork.
Years later when Dorothy was asked if she felt combining home life and a career to be difficult. She replied, “Absolutely not!” (Dorothy failed to mention she was helped along with a household staff of at least seven, two live-in maids, a live-in cook, a nanny who lived in the nursery, a day cleaning lady, a furnace man, plus a secretary or two for her business.)
Dorothy continued to push boundaries through innovation, championing sustainability while delivering timeless solutions well into the 1950’s.
Dorothy died at age 80 in 1969.
EXAMPLES FROM FAMOUS DECORATING COMMISSIONS BY DOROTHY DRAPER:
PLASTERWORK MOTIFS from HAMPSHIRE HOUSE APARTMENTS
BLACK AND WHITE MARBLE FLOOR——DRAKE HOTEL——CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
WALLPAPER EXAMPLES
THE GRAND HOTEL——MACKINAC ISLAND, MICHIGAN
THE 1952 PACKARD “FASION-KEYED BY DOROTHY DRAPER”
“THE HIGH STYLE OF DOROTHY DRAPER” EXHIBITION WHERE A WHOLE ROOM WAS CREATED USING HER EXACT DESIGN WORK——
MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. MAY, 2006
Dorothy Draper’s most iconic commission was the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia featuring 500 rooms and. surrounded by 3,000 acres and is a story/blog in itself!
INSIDE THE GREENBRIER
THE CLOCK ROOM
CANDOR, POISE, AND SELF-BELIEF
DOROTHY DRAPER
SHE WAS INVINCIBLE!
Sy’s Salient Points: Previously there was a New York Design Week every year at the end of October where I was asked to lecture for a few years. At that time, glorious Christmas decorations appeared like magic. My husband, daughter and I had a small tradition of going to the Carlyle Hotel for drinks and hearty snacks after my lecture. We always invited some New York friends to join us for evening cocktails. I have many, many good memories of those joyous occasions.
My husband and I stayed at the Greenbrier and attended lectures while also exploring the interiors and grounds of the Hotel’s 3000 acres——not all 3000! The brightly colored interiors are fun and dynamic. On one section of the grounds are small cottages to rent. Dorothy nicknamed the hotel “a Brobdingnagian monster of a bowling alley,”
Carleton Varney, her protégé who worked with her bought the firm after Dorothy died and it is still in her name today. Varney’s two sons now run Dorothy Draper & Co.
Various print and encyclopedia sources were used for this blog.
HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY DARLING BLAIRE