Note from the editor :

Ernst Dryden, poster artist, fashion pioneer and Hollywood costume designer played a major part in dictating how an entire generation looked and dressed. When he died in Hollywood fifty years age, his entire collection of some 4000 designs and illustrations were sent to England and were recenty saved from destruction by the author Anthony Lipmann. He has used them for the painstaking research in piecing together the extraordinary life story of their enigmatic creator.

This first-ever account reveals Dryden’s life’s work to have been remarkable not only for its fotuitous preservation, but also for its range and qulity. Possessing the uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time, he studied art in his native Austria under Gustav Klimt before embarking on his diverse career. His output includes design classics such as the advertising posters for Bugatti and Cinzano.

Divinely Elegant is illustrated troughout with superb colour examples of Dryden’s output from all stages of his career, as well as rare personal photographs, erotica form private collections, letters and material from the Dryden Archiv and Collections in Europe and the United States.