Divinely Elegant, The World of Ernst Dryden
Lipmann, Anthony. Divinely Elegant, The World of Ernst Dryden. First Edition. 1989. Book and dust jacket are both in very good
condition. Foreword by Billy Wilder.
Ernst Dryden (pronounced “Dreeden”)
is not as remembered as Cecil Beaton, but they had much in common. Both were
elegant dressers who worked in various capacities for fashion magazines and
film. Dryden was a fashion illustrator for the great Weimar era fashion
magazine Die Dame before making his
way west to Hollywood (with a brief stop in New York to design a clothing line
for Saks). Much of the work in this attractive monograph had been lost for
forty years when it was rescued by the author, just hours before it was to be thrown
into the trash heap.
“The most striking aspect of
[Dryden’s] work was its variety and volume. It consisted of over four thousand
items, including photographs, tracings, sketches, finished gouache artworks,
watercolor and pencil designs and many more ephemera.”
--Anthony Lipmann
