"Comfort, Color, and Grand Enough Scale"

The surge of bold high end design in the Hospitality industry can be attributed to the legendary designer, Dorothy Draper. In the 30's and 40's Dorothy turned the hotels into "self-contained theme parks", more than just a place to stay the night while travelling. Draper was the first to “professionalize” the interior design industry by establishing, in 1923, the first interior design company in the United States, something that until then was unheard of, and also at a time when it was considered daring for a woman to go into business for herself. She was the first designer to take control over ALL aspects of the design of the hotel from matchbooks to the staff's uniforms. Her trademark for her restaurant and hotel projects was contrasting bold colors, bodacious colors with clean white neo-baroque plasterwork. Some of her renowned projects are the Camellia House at Chicago's Drake Hotel, Fefe's Monte Carlo in New York, and most of all, the most ambitious and enduring, the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, which she resuscitated after WWII. Dorothy's success in design was definitely credited to her marketing and public relations. She knew that over-the-top designs would generate a buzz and thus create business and profits for her clients. Now through June 23rd we have the privilege to admire her works that are now showing at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. Draper was not only a "'proto-feminist" who demanded full creative control with the major real estate developers, but also a visionary who decorated hospitals with bright curtains and uplifting washable wallpapers. Another progressive design Dorothy was proud of was transforming the Roman court at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art into a cafeteria with a 75- by- 40 foot pool in the middle with surrounding black and white Doric columns. The trend setter's influence is everywhere from Frank Gehry’s architectural forms to Philippe Starck’s Ghost chair. “Taking an eighteenth-century chair normally done in wood and making it in clear plastic is a Dorothy Draper kind of thing”. All of her tips must have been really great for housewives in the fifties. To have this woman telling them, ‘Don’t be afraid! Paint the door green!” Her inspiration and message "your home is the backdrop of your life,whether it is a palace or a one bedroom apartment, but it should honestly be you own. It takes courage to seek your own taste and express it", is as fresh as her bright pink walls and as black and white as her famed checker board floors.