Helen Dryden*

Helen Dryden
(1887-1981)

US artist and industrial designer born in Baltimore. She possessed unusual artistic ability, designing and selling clothes for paper dolls that appeared in newspaper fashion sections. She trained in landscape painting under Hugh Breckenridge, and studied briefly at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts before moving to New York and to begin her career in fashion design illustration at Vogue magazine in 1909.

From 1913 through 1922, she designed Vogue’s magazine covers. From 1914 well into the 1920s, she designed costumes for shows on Broadway. In the late 1920s, Dryden became art director for Ohio’s Dura Company where she designed chrome decorative objects, textiles and glassware. At the time, she was acclaimed as “the highest paid woman artist.” She was reportedly paid $100,000 annually by Studebaker from 1934 through 1937 for her work as a stylist, and was credited in its ads as “the stylist” of the 1937 Studebaker President.