 Long before the catchphrase "it's a good thing" fell from Martha Stewart's lips, debutante-turned-designer Dorothy Draper (1889-1969) enamored the nation with her inimitable style and confident approach to interiors. "If it looks right, it is right," she famously said. And for Draper, nothing looked more right than bringing a sense of theatricality to everything she touched.
In the Pink, organized by the Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale and the Dorothy Draper & Co. Inc. New York and London, pays homage to this grande dame of interior design with a lavish gallery makeover that juxtaposes her high-wattage signature stylistic elements with everything from furniture to china to hotel matchbooks from her many projects. Visitors enter the show through a grand doorway surrounded with baroque ornamentation, wander past an eye-popping birdcage-shaped chandelier that dangles nearly to the floor (inspired by her Metropolitan Museum of Art designs), and find themselves among displays accented with vibrant pink and white striped wallpaper, cabbage roses, and black and white checkered floors.
 “One of the items we are especially fond of is a little booklet she published in 1936 entitled 'How to Develop Your Personality for Success, Happiness and Popularity,' ” said Museum President and Executive Director Irvin Lippman. “This is one of the most imaginative, dramatic, and baroque installations we have ever created. It is a fitting tribute to a woman whose bold sense of style made her America’s best known interior designer.”
Draper's wealthy, high society background and 1912 marriage to a doctor from an equally prominent family provided her with a rich client base, but it was her larger-than-life personality that truly influenced her interior designs. "I started this career because I loved doing houses," Draper said. "I'd done three of my own and I couldn't keep on moving my family all the time, so I decided to decorate other people's homes and buildings."
In 1930, she divorced her husband and landed her first major commercial commission, New York's exclusive Carlyle Hotel. The Draper Touch saturated every inch of the 40-story residential property, from the stylized Greek figures and patterns that framed the walls to the contemporary art deco lobby.
 She followed that success with Hampshire House, a 37-story apartment hotel on Central Park South, and received a reported $396,000 for her efforts, the largest decorating contract ever given to a woman. An antidote to the Great Depression, the rooms combined pink-and-white striped wallpaper with beds upholstered in green leatherette while the building's restaurant popped with black-and-white marble floors, maroon lacquer doors, and a pink ceiling.
In the Pink showcases elements of Draper's work on the Carlyle and Hampshire House, along with her major design commissions at Arrowhead Springs Resort and Spa in San Bernardino, California (1939), the Camellia House Supper Club at Chicago's Drake Hotel (1941), and The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia (1948).
The exhibition also casts a rosy spotlight on her mass appeal, which paved the way for the wave of HGTV designers to come. Americans would have to wait until the 1950s for color television in their homes, but Draper's how-to guides brought full-on Technicolor to their living spaces. "Even in a formal dining room you don't want to be ponderous or gloomy," Draper said in her 1939 best-selling book Decorating is Fun!"Eating is really one of your indoor sports. You play three times a day, and it's well worthwhile to make the game as pleasant as possible."
 By this time, the duchess of decorating was serving as a design consultant for Good Housekeeping. Her home furnishing lines arrived in the late '40s and '50s, with groovy Hawaiian Islands and Spanish-inspired prints. She even put her design stamp on an airplane interior and a Packard automobile. Few careers in the history of design have been more colorful.
A beautiful 216-page book accompanies the exhibition. In the Pink: Dorothy Draper, America’s Most Fabulous Decorator is available in the Museum Store. The book, written by Carlton 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.Also available in the Museum Store is Dorothy Draper’s ground breaking book, Decorating is Fun! How To Be Your Own Decorator, first published in 1939, with an introduction by Carleton Varney.
The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale and
Dorothy Draper & Co. Inc. New York and London
With additional support from Friends of the Museum of Art
In association with Nova Southeastern University
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