Cover Image: The Draper Touch-Deluxe Edition

The Draper Touch-Deluxe Edition

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I’d never heard of Dorothy Draper, perhaps because she is not so well known in the UK, and I found the exploration of her life and work really interesting. She was a talented, creative and charismatic woman who was enormously influential as an interior designer and decorator. She became a successful businesswoman with her own decorating company and much of her work remains to be seen today. Hers is an interesting story and this biography is a detailed and knowledgeable account, written by the man who knew her and later took over the business. Included are many photos, although these are in black and white so the reader can’t get an idea of Draper’s use of colour, for which she was most renowned. I suggest going to YouTube to have a look – there is quite a bit of material available there. I found the endless recounting of anecdotes a tad tiresome after a while, not least because many of them felt repetitious, and quite, frankly, not very pleasant. I don’t think I would have liked Dorothy Draper. However, I’m more than glad to have discovered her and her work and look forward to perhaps seeing some of what remains when I visit the States. I recommend the book to anyone interested in design and decorating, as well their history, and also as a well-constructed and informative biography of a quite remarkable woman.

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Raised in a wealthy American ‘aristocratic’ family in the Gilded Age in Tuxedo Park in New York, Dorothy Draper remained an Edwardian all her life, and imbued many of the places she decorated with Edwardian glamour and splendor but in a modern way. Raised to be a supportive wife and hostess, she became a businesswoman who revolutionized the new occupation of interior decorating. She designed smart black and white walk-ups as well as grand Southern hotels.

It wasn’t an easy life. Her husband suddenly told her that he wanted a divorce, her children rebelled as teenagers, and she had financial troubles. The writings of Norman Vincent Peale helped her through all this.

This book with its beautiful pictures tells her story in a charming way, especially interesting for budding interior designers.

I received this free ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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I absolutely fell in love with Dorothy Draper when I first encountered her in the fiction novel The Grand Design by Joy Callaway. I have been eager to learn more about her real life and designs so I couldn't want to jump into The Draper Touch.

I so enjoyed learning more about Dorothy Draper's personal life, her family, her contemporaries and of course her revolutionary designs. If you are interested in learning more about this female iconic designer that paved the way for women's careers in interior design, I recommend that you pickup this beautiful book. The photos are stunning and I enjoyed the opportunity to take a step back in time to the beautiful spaces Dorothy Draper created.

I received this book courtesy of the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Carleton Varney's name is now more recognizable than Mrs. Draper's is. At an earlier time, Mrs. Draper was IT in the world of fashionable design.

What mostly matters in looking at this book isn't familiarity with Mrs. Draper but an openness to learning about the essential skills of design and, frankly, all of life: Decide what you want and go get it. So simple! Except when it comes to doing it. Mrs. Draper was born with every material advantage a person could have. Her doom, in the ancient Celtic sense, was to be a frivolous ornament to a man's life. That might be what Society had in mind, but Mrs. Draper begged to differ, and when circumstances forced her hand she strode forward (a very, very tall person for any era, over six feet!) to meet the world on her own terms.

The design of this book is, unsurprisingly, the reason it exists. It's lush and luxurious. Dorothy Draper lived in a time before color photography was common...she died in 1969 at almost 80...so most of what we see isn't twenty-first century Technicolor Architectural Digest stuff that we're so accustomed to. But to counterbalance that, look at that list of famous early-twentieth-century photographers! These are beautiful images...though there are not a lot of room portraits, so get that out of your expectations early. Instead we have something more intimate, more revealing than the lady's public aesthetic: Portraits, snapshots, items that truly reflect Mrs. Draper herself, not only her work but her world.

You might well have read something of Carleton Varney's work before, being as he's a columnist and an author of long standing. His style is breezily companionable and approachable. He doesn't pull his focus to show Mrs. Draper, or her clients, only in soft lights...but he soft-pedals that drama that no doubt occurred all too often, without ever ignoring it. Big personalities make big enemies, after all, so pretending she was universally loved...well. It's not like Author Varney isn't offering a bouquet of vintage cabbage roses and a box of pâtisserie from Fauchon, he simply does so without dishonest concealment.

I saw this book and was instantly transported to my past. Mama was a Draper devotee, and I read her books...<I>Decorating is Fun!</i> and <I>Entertaining is Fun!</i>, now republished by Shannongrove Press...when a teenaged faggot. How much they influenced my mother was very clear, I only had to look around our house to see the myriad Draper touches. I never had a white wall in my home! Although there was entirely too much pink for my taste, thanks to Draper...a color I still abominate.

This read was a delight, a way to re-experience pleasant formative memories, and a very informative look at the life of a rare woman of business, boss of many men, in an era when they were uncommon entities indeed.

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It is entirely thanks to NetGalley that I know who Dorothy Draper is. There was a recently published novel about her and, for those who want a non-fiction account, there is The Draper Touch. I feel that the two titles very much complement each other. A plus of The Draper Touch is that it was written by someone who knew Dorothy well. There are also many photos in this work and I very much enjoyed looking at those.

This title is a reissue and I am so glad that it was put back in print. It offers a biography written by someone who knew and admired the designer and a chance to dwell in her most interesting world.

For those who do not know, Dorothy was friends with those in the highest echelons including President Taft’s daughter. She was married (and divorced) from one of FDR’s close friend. Dorothy was raised conventionally but wanted her own unique life. She became a well-known designer. One great achievement of her was her work on the Greenbrier Resort.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Shannongrove Press for this title. All opinions are my own.

Pub date: 29 Jun 2022

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Dorothy Draper was larger than life and defied all odds to start her own company in 1925, becoming America's first female interior decorator. This book showcased her upbringing, her privileged life as a socialite and her deeply competitive spirit. Dorothy had a whimsical and unique sense of design, integrating bold color choices and arresting patterns with her iconic floral fabrics, always on the grandest of scale , The author writes, "fantasy and myth were her constant companions". I enjoyed learning the story of Dorothy''s life, but I would've loved to have seen more photos and illustrations of her work to better study and understand her extravagant and wildly sophisticated style.

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As an English person I confess that I had never heard of Dorothy Draper. It is clear that she shaped a sea change in American design style for decades and challenged the status quo and this was interesting to me. As you read on it becomes clear that Varney was an employee of Draper and has a great deal of admiration and love for her and has been deeply inspired by her life and work.

For me, this was rather uneven, as I wanted more meat on the bones and I felt that perhaps the author was, at times, too kind and uncritical of Draper and her methods. I would also have liked more on the work she did and less on the social life she led. There are quite a few photos, but I would have liked more on the interiors and more details, photographically speaking.

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After reading Joy Callaway's "The Grand Design" I was intrigued by Dorothy Draper. When I saw this book was available, I wanted to read it to learn more about this interesting lady!

What an incredible book this is - so much information about Dorothy and her designs. Maybe a bit too much history about her ancestors - I kind of skimmed that part, not what I was really interested in, but I can see why it was included in her story.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for a temporary, digital ARC in return for my review.

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Dorothy Draper is considered the mother of interior decoration and design. Born in 1889, she grew up in the lap of Gilded Age luxury in the bedroom community of Tiuxedo Park in NY. She was different though: taller than the average female and male, and a free spirit to boot. To escape the confines of Tuxedo Park, she married and that marriage resulted in 3 children. Sadly, the marriage ended in divorce (much to her surprise).

Her career started with her decorating her home and segued into a full fledged career/business. The height of her fame came in the 1930s and 1940s, and 4 major commissions stand out from the others: the Versailles club in NYC, the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia, the restaurant (the Dorotheum) in Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. Her career slowed down in the 1950s, due to her trademark style (bright colors, bold patterns, Baroque/neo-Victorian design) becoming obsolete. Her company was eventually purchased by this book's author and Dorothy ultimately died in 1969 from Alzheimer's complications.

Over the course of 13 chapters interspersed with 4 sections of photos, Carleton Varney presents the life of Dorothy Draper in an interesting, sometimes humorous, and always insightful manner. He shows what a unique character Dorothy was: haughty and imperious, yet extremely insecure. She loved her design team and her grandchildren, but she was also self-absorbed and selfish. She had the very annoying quality of being unable to see any viewpoint but her own. Despite these flaws, her legacy as a designer/interior decorator lives on in the various commissions of hers still in existence, particularly the Greenbrier.

Varney doesn't just provide a bio of Draper, but also a bio of American society. He takes us through several periods: late Gilded Age, WWI, Roaring 1920s, Great Depression, WWII, and post-war era. A book that combines three areas I enjoy: history, architecture/interior design, and biography. That makes this a triple threat read that is definitely worth getting.

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I was glad to read this book after I read a fictionalized account of her redesigning the Greenbrier.
It was a fascinating read that made me learn more about this great designer.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

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I absolutely love this book and the kids absolutely see it is the perfect coffee table book. The subjects life is incredibly interesting in her body of work incredibly eclectic.

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