I found myself going back to the auction table – once, then again, then again. I picked up the neat pen and ink drawings of women in what looked like very expensive clothes. The drawings were for different occasions – Valentine’s Day, a fancy night out, a wedding, a vacation.
There were a dozen of them, all originals and hand-sketched, and some were wrapped in plastic. They looked to have been done by someone who worked in a newspaper or magazine ad department, or an ad agency. In the left bottom corner were notations for column widths and sizes, indicating that the drawings were destined for a page in a publication.
Across the top were the words:
5th Ave ToDay
They were signed by Helene, who put accent marks over the first two “e’s” in her name.
Who was Helene and what were these drawings?
Each time I went over and picked them up, I was even more intrigued. They were lying among some other non-related items on the auction table, so there was no way to connect them to anything else there.
So, I’m assuming Helene worked for an ad agency, likely in the 1940s or 1950s, based on the look and style of the clothes: the lacy hats, the pleated dresses, the short jackets over dresses, the girls’ coats. The drawings (or were these her own designs?) may have been done for some fancy store on New York’s Fifth Avenue, because these were not clean-the-house clothes.
She put each group of women – and children – in settings befitting the clothes, and added her own signature row of squiggly lines before writing her name.
I’d love to have bought the drawings, and I got in early on the bidding. But two other women wanted them more than me: The drawings sold for $80. Too high, I thought.
Helene was apparently in good company. I found several sites on the web that feature and sell vintage fashion drawings. Here are some early art deco fashion covers created by Helen Dryden for Vogue magazine in the early 1900s through 1920s, contained in the Blog of an Art Admirer and History Lover. Dryden was a famous artist and industrial designer.
I’ve created a slideshow of the Helene drawings below (click on the first photo to view the slideshow). If you recognize her work, please tell us about her.
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