Art Deco Fashion Drawings by Helen Dryden (1887-1981)

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"These lovely ladies owned the world - the fields, the seas, the skies where they sat in the rim of a new moon or shared their mirror with a peacock. Nothing was confining, nothing had a hard edge - no limits, all the earth became ones dreaming world". - It is the introduction written by Diana Vreeland, a former editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, to a book published in 1975 of vintage Vogue magazine cover posters.

1920

Helen Dryden was born in Baltimore.
She was largely self-trained, although her art education consisted of 4 years of training in landscape painting and one summer school session as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
First, the artist's portfolio of fashion drawings was rejection by Vogue.
A year later she was under contract to Vogue and had been working there for the following 13 years, creating both fashion drawings and covers. After leaving Vogue in 1922, she became a cover artist for Delineator.

Miss Dryden was also a successful costume designer for Broadway shows.
She worked for Studebaker approximately 1934-1937 (being paid a reported $100,000 per year, which made her the highest paid woman artist at the time).
Her design of the 1937 Studebaker President established Helen Dryden as an important industrial designer.
Later Ms Dryden became the Art Director for Dura Products, a major automotive parts manufacturer that also produced giftware.

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Rare Blue Parrot, 1921

Blue Door, 1920