A Century in Design

The exhibit "The High Style of Dorothy Draper," opening today at the Museum of the City of New York, celebrates the old-fashioned idea that well-appointed rooms are a symbol of a well-ordered life. The exhibit, the first retrospective of an interior designer mounted by a major museum, suggests that handsome window dressings are a window to the soul.

Just a few blocks downtown from that museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute has installed "AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion," which opens tomorrow. The exhibit, loaded with wild examples of British fashion, is an ode to shock value. That these two exhibits are up at the same time provides a way of thinking about the progression of the 20th century in fashion and design. Draper, born into a wealthy family in Tuxedo, N.Y., made an impact in the 1930s and into the early 1960s. She died in 1969, a year famous as the fulcrum of cultural change. "AngloMania" begins in 1976 and reaches into the present. Taken together, the two shows illustrate a major shift in fashion and design in the 20th century, from the private and elegant to the public and vulgar.

The theme of contrast over the decades can be seen in the Costume Institute's show itself - which opened last night with a splashy gala sponsored by Vogue magazine. Ensembles labled "transgressive" - from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's work for the Sex Pistols as well as her recent work - are shown against "traditional" outfits. In a room celebrating "The Hunt," a traditional red wool twill hunt ensemble is paired with Ms. Westwood's jauntier mid-1990s interpretation of the look, along with John Galliano's newsprint jersey ensemble, and Stephen Jones's fantastical fur hats. In "The English Garden" - the museum's Kirtlington Park Room - Hussein Chalayan's pink burst of a cocktail dress is shown with a collection of 18th-century gowns whose "high style" would have delighted Draper.

What's immediately striking is that the clothing on display was created to aggressively confound the average viewer. They are meant to unsettle, not to comfort. Why not make a Mohawk out of tampons? Or a corset resembling an aluminum ribcage?

By contrast, even at her splashiest, Draper's handsome work was meant for pleasure. The exhibit focuses primarily on the six of Draper's projects that curator Donald Albrecht considers most representative. They include the Carlyle Hotel, the interior for the Convair 880 airplane, and the Greenbriar Hotel in West Virginia - the only place her designs are still intact. As these examples show, her taste was larger than life; her rooms burst with thick lines and dramatically contrasting colors. Still, it was meant to attract rather than repel.

This is accomplished in residences and in large commercial projects, too. Her contemporaries - including Elsie de Wolfe and Ruby Ross Wood - decorated primarily individual homes, but Draper had public spaces (and market saturation) in mind. Along the way, she made her mark on some of New York's great large spaces. In 1930, she gave the Carlyle, where she later lived, an Art Deco makeover complete with classical busts and theatrical lighting. In 1937, the Hampshire House apartment hotel became the first real showcase of her patented style: a blend of high Baroque decoration, bold patterns, and loud color combinations, especially pink and green. And she created a restaurant design for the Met that was so distinctly Draper that it became unofficially known as the Dorotheum Cafe. As if to illustrate the larger cultural shift, the cafe began to be dismantled in the 1970s, and the last of it was taken down a few months ago.

But perhaps Draper has more in common with the Anglos and Anglophiles than meets the eye. One concept on loud display at the Met is the notion that how we dress says a lot about who we are, and that, by extension, our behavior should match our chosen lifestyle accoutrements. In the 1930s, to that end, Draper started a correspondence course that offered subscribers the skills to "develop your personality for success, happiness, and popularity." In lieu of those assets, however, a fabulous foyer will do in a pinch.

While Draper revered the beautiful, she did not reflexively bow to tradition.

She was for sawing the legs off, sweeping up the sawdust, and getting on with things. In a 1957 interview with Edward R. Murrow, she reminds one of Julia Child, with a blowsy willingness to do whatever it takes to pull off the job. Showing off an ornate cabinet, she brags that without telling her mother, from whom she inherited it, she sawed apart the doors to make them open more elegantly. "Whether things are old or not," she crows in an extinct upper-crust East Coast accent, "we just cut them and move on, if they look better."

Perhaps most important, as with some of the unconventional ensembles at the Met, many of Draper's furniture designs for hotels were nonfunctional. She employed dressers without drawers, sofas unsuitable for sitting - and she was fond of painting over antique furniture to update it. The look was all. It may read as high drama now, but it's still pleasing. Can British punk fashion hold up to that standard? It's high drama, indeed, but pleasing is another matter.

"AngloMania" until September 4 (1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd Street, 212-535-7710). "The High Style of Dorothy Draper" (1220 Fifth Ave., between 103rd and 104th streets, 212-534-1672).