This article forms part of the Decorative and Applied Arts Encyclopedia, a master reference hub providing a structured overview of design history, materials, movements, and practitioners.
Has there ever been an American decorator as famous as Dorothy Draper? Like Martha Stewart, Draper was a preacher and teacher whose how-to books and Good Housekeeping columns provided middle-class homemakers with affordable ideas for making their homes more functional and comfortable. She became one of the most respected career women in the United States thanks to her originality as a stylist and her daring as a businesswoman. She shocked the design world in 1937 when she decorated the thirty-seven-story Hampshire House apartment hotel on Central Park South in New York City, delivering a project that indicated her signature touch – ‘baroque fantasy’.
In Pink: Dorothy Draper, America’s Most Fabulous Decorator, by Carleton Varney, lavishly illustrates Draper’s most important projects for the first time.