Work
In 1918, Draper started to decorate her house to her own tastes. From this redecorating she received several compliments from her friends who also encouraged her to go into the decorating business. This inspired Draper and in 1925 she started her first business venture called the Architectural Clearing House which she operated from inside her home.
Her first big break in the decorating business started when she redecorated Carlyle Hotel on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Dorothy was hired by Douglas Elliman to recreate New York's Sutton Place as people were not purchasing the homes. She painted all the buildings black with white trim and added colors to the doors. She then decorated the Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco. Draper's design work also included the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Hampshire House. Draper hired Lester Grundy to be her assistant. Steeped in art history, Grundy shared his passion for Baroque décor. He discovered the Cinquinni family (Italian Carvers), who helped translate his sketches of Draper’s ideas into wood carvings. These carvings were then used to make molds for the signature Dorothy Draper scroll and shell designs. With these molds, they fashioned chandeliers, urns, door surroundings, and ceiling décor. This helped further create the signature look of Dorothy Draper, Inc.
Soon hired by architects, Douglas Elliman then hired her to re-do New York's Hotel Carlyle. In 1930, after her divorce from Dr. Draper, she designed the lobby of the Carlyle, including the addition of a light fixture in the restaurant that looked like a hot air balloon. In 1933, Draper was asked by the Phipps family to renovate a row of tenements on Sutton Place, Manhattan. She also oversaw the redesign of the Hampshire House, ranging from the carpet, walls, restaurant, and everything in between. Over the years, she completed makeovers for World's Fair Terrace Club, and Maison Coty; Chicago's Drake Hotel's Camelia House, Washington, D.C.'s Mayflower Hotel; and Hollywood's Arrowhead Springs Hotel. Also, she designed the interiors of the famous Palácio Quitandinha in Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1944. Among decorators, it was said that these locations had been "Draperized".
One of Dorothy Draper's most famous designs was the The Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The resort had almost burned to the ground during the Civil War. It was brought back after the war ended and subsequently purchased by the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway company, which hired Dorothy Draper to redecorate the entire resort. Draper designed everything from matchbook covers to menus to staff uniforms. This consummate attention to detail revealed how she took control in all design aspects and completely transformed everything about the spaces she designed. Its reopening and redecorating was the social event of the season and attracted multiple important figures of the period.
In the early 1950s, she designed special automotive interiors for Kaiser-Frazer Corporation and Packard Motor Car Company, making a pink polka-dot truck. In addition to interior design, she worked on packaging for the cosmetics firm of Dorothy Gray. She also designed her very own fabrics for her clients such as Romance & Rhododendrons and Fudge Apron which were used in her design of the Greenbrier.
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