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 housewives with affordable ideas for making their homes more functional and comfortable.Thanks to her originality as a stylist and her daring as a businesswoman, she became one of the most respected career women in the United States. 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 became indicative of her signature touch - 'baroque fantasy'. In the Pink: Dorothy Draper, America's Most Fabulous Decorator , by Carleton Varney, lavishly illustrates for the first time Draper s most important projects. From the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia and Quitandinha in Brazil to her important fabrics for F. Schumacher & Co. and her automobile and airplane interiors of the 1950s, Draper c
Carleton Varney grew up in Nahant,
Massachusetts. His parents loved to garden and one of
his greatest influences was living among the natural
colors of flowers. Varney graduated from Oberlin
College, where he majored in Spanish with dreams of
becoming an ambassador. His studies took him to the
University of Madrid and Europe. There he was forever
impressed by the simplistic cottages as well as the
magnificent cathedrals and palatial interiors he visited.
Upon returning to New York in 1962, he earned a
Masters Degree in Education from New York University
and later joined the decorating firm of Dorothy Draper
and Company, Inc. Now forty years after becoming
the company's president, he still imbues each design
with a color-filled imagination. Varney writes a regular
syndicated column that appears in the Palm Beach
Daily News. He has published twenty-seven books on
decorating, penned two novels, and written the official
biography of Dorothy Draper. He has been the design
consultant to the White House, decorated Mackinac
Island's Grand Hotel, and now serves as the curator
and designer to the Greenbrier in White Sulphur
Springs, West Virginia. He appears often on his live HSN
television show, Live Vividly, and has just released his
first CD, Music with Style, for Rick Dees Entertainment.
Mr. Varney resides in New York and Palm Beach.
