When I rented my first Washington apartment in 1976, I hadn’t a clue who Dorothy Draper was. But it turned out that the bold green, black and white lobby and exotic banana-leaf paper hallways at the Carillon House on Wisconsin Avenue had been installed 25 years earlier by Draper, then the most famous decorator in the country.
One morning not too long after I moved in, the lobby was abruptly de-Draperized. The dramatic white plaster mirror, the faux fireplace and the black glass-topped tables were gone. Today, the owners of the Carillon House say they wish they had put all of Draper’s fabulousness into storage. Because in 2006, the woman who adored pink, red and acid green together, who loved wallpaper with cabbage roses the size of bowling balls, and who made her mark on hotels, resorts, restaurants, homes and department stores across the country from 1925 to 1960, is having a major revival.
A splashy new coffee-table book, a museum exhibition and reproductions of her trademark furniture, fabric and wallpaper designs — even a revival of her favorite over-the-top paint colors — are bringing back the name of the formidable tastemaker, decorator and author, who died in 1969.
New York designer Carleton Varney, a Draper protege who took over the firm in 1962, noticed an upsurge of interest in Draper’s work in the past few years. Decorators were emulating her Baroque detailing; eBay was selling Draper furnishings at record prices. Varney decided the time was right to comb the firm’s archives and publish a book.
Before Martha Stewart
“Dorothy Draper was the one who made decorating and design a business,” Varney says of Draper, the original domestic diva, who out-Marthaed Martha in her day by spreading her gospel of big, bold style to housewives eager for some excitement in their lives.
“The lesson here is that people are looking for glamor again,” says Stephen Drucker, editor in chief of House Beautiful, who likened Draper’s larger-than-life personality to that of style arbiter Diana Vreeland. “We like Dorothy Draper because she turned up the volume. She lived out loud. Things have become too beige for a lot of people.”
For Draper, beige was a dirty word. The monumental Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., the red, green, pink and coral fantasy she decorated, still stands as a living monument to Draper style. Varney has updated it and refreshed it over the years, while keeping the country’s major installation of Draper’s work as dramatic and outrageous as it was in 1948, when the $4.2 million renovation was unveiled at a postwar house party featuring such society guests as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Bing Crosby.
“Dorothy Draper was to decorating what Coco Chanel was to fashion,” says Varney. “She brought color into a world which was sad and dreary. Today, the world is in terrible shape, and everyone wants color around them again.”
Born Dorothy Tuckerman in 1889, Draper had an upper-crust upbringing in Tuxedo Park, N.Y., a wealthy New York suburb that was one of the first gated communities in the United States. Her parents were part of an old New England family with deep social connections, and Dorothy spent her childhood playing in turreted mansions and high-ceilinged ballrooms. Dorothy’s younger cousin, Sister Parish (born Dorothy May Kinnicutt, 1910-1994), also would become a major interior designer of the 20th Century.
A flair for decorating
Little Dorothy, whose nickname was Star, grew up with a debutante’s sense of glamor and privilege. Family money and connections allowed her to maintain her identity even after she married George Draper, a doctor whose patients included his Groton classmate Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1912. The Drapers had three children, and as they bought and sold houses, Dorothy Draper developed a reputation as having a flair for decorating.
By age 40, she was running her own design business, but her marriage was foundering, and the couple divorced. At nearly 6feet tall and possessed of an imposing personality, Dorothy had no trouble mining her social register connections. She began taking on high-profile projects such as hotels, apartment housesand hospitals, infusing them with her signature style. At the Hampshire House hotel on New York’s Central Park South, she painted the rooms in watermelon, turquoise and mustard yellow, put in giant checkerboard black-and-white marble floors, and even designed the pink and red rose-covered menus.
Her career took off and soon she was designing for major hotels across the country, including The Drake Hotel in Chicago, the Fairmont in San Francisco and the Carlyle in New York. In Washington, projects included the Mayflower Hotel, where she did a Dorothy Draper floor, and the lobby of the grand Westchester apartment building, which still retains some of her original work, including architectural details, sofas, tables, lamps and mirrors, according to Varney. She created the interiors of jets and cars, and wrote books and columns on entertaining and decorating.
Her pronouncements were legendary. “The color of your front door announces your personality to the world.” Or, “If it looks right, it is right.”
She did not always play to rave reviews. A 1954 article in The Washington Post and Times-Herald reviewed her famous makeover of an old Roman court in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art into a new restaurant. “The kindest thing that can be said is that it looks like a bad Joan Crawford movie,” wrote the critic.
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By the time Draper retired in 1960, Varney had signed on to champion the legacy of Dorothy Draper & Co., as he does to this day. Says Varney, “Her fantasy was just enormous. Now, she is an icon.”
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Fabulous design, the Draper way
Dorothy Draper believed everyone could benefit from bringing color and theatricality into their homes. And although she was born in the 19th Century, look how current her design ideas still are:
– Black-and-white tile floors
– Bold awning-stripe wallpaper
– The combination of black and white with a dash of a brighter color
– Liberal use of mirrors — the bigger the better
– Overscale floral fabrics and wallpapers in vivid shades
– Unexpected color pairings, such as red and hot pink or pale blue and violet
– White plaster frames, sconces and chandeliers, preferably with scrolled and Baroque detailing
– Screens of all kinds
– Black lampshades
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How to get the Draper style
There’s a whole lot of Dorothy Draper going on this year:
– Carleton Varney, who has headed Dorothy Draper & Co. for more than 40 years, has just published “In the Pink: Dorothy Draper, America’s Most Fabulous Decorator” (Pointed Leaf Press, 216 pages, $95).
– The Museum of the City of New York’s exhibit “The High Style of Dorothy Draper” highlights some of the designer’s large public commissions and shows her influence on shaping American style. Through Sept. 10. www.mcny.org.
– The Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia offers “Get Draperized” packages with seminars, exhibits and signature rhododendron cocktails to match the wallpaper Draper designed. www.greenbrier.com
– In conjunction with the exhibit, Benjamin Moore has a limited-edition Dorothy Draper Color Collection of 15 signature shades, including Pretty in Pink and Blazing Orange. www.benjaminmoore.com
– Varney has created a line of Draper-inspired furniture for Kindel and high-voltage Draper fabrics for Carleton V and Carleton Varney by the Yard.