Style Imitating Art | “Hot Weather Fashions Number” by Helen Dryden

More art, more dress up games, more summer fun!

About Style Imitating Art

Style Imitating Art is hosted by Salazar of 14 Shades of Grey, Shelbee of Shelbee on the Edge, and Marsha of Marsha in the Middle. It challenges us to draw style inspiration from pieces of art. Every other Monday, one of the hosts, acting as presenter, selects an inspiration image that they will each post on their blogs. The following Monday, each host shares her art inspired outfit. Participants are invited to submit their art inspired outfits to the presenter by 10:00 p.m. EST on the Tuesday following the hosts’ art inspired outfit posts. The following day, Wednesday, the presenter will share all of the submissions on her blog.

You don’t have to be a blogger to join either! In fact, you don’t even have to join but you can still use the art to inspire an outfit just for the sake of trying something different. If you want to share your inspired outfit, we invite you do so on Instagram or any other social media platform that you prefer. Just be sure to tag Salazar, Shelbee, or Marsha so we know you have joined. Go have some fun in your closets and join the SIA challenge next week!

This Week’s Presenter

Salazar chose this week’s art inspiration because it’s a very summery and colorful piece appropriate for these hot and humid dog days of summer.

The Artwork

“Hot Weather Fashions Number” by Helen Dryden

About the Artist: Helen Dryden

Depending on the source, Helen Dryden was born either on November 5, 1882; November 26, 1882; some time in 1883; or November 5, 1887, to a wealthy family that resided near the first Washington Monument in Baltimore, Maryland. After experiencing a break-down of their sugar refining business when Helen was 7 years old, the family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she attended Eden Hall followed by Mrs. Comegy’s School.

Exhibiting unusual artistic talents during early childhood, Helen enjoyed designing and selling clothing for paper dolls. As part of a school project, she created an entire collection of paper dolls and dresses which was featured in the fashion section of a local newspaper. This feature created opportunities for the young Ms. Dryden, leading to a position as illustrator for articles written by fashion editor Anne Rittenhouse in the Philadelphia Public Ledger and Philadelphia Press.

Primarily self-taught, Helen’s art education consisted of 4 years studying landscape painting under Hugh Breckinridge and one summer school session at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Having no real interest in landscape painting, Helen eventually shifted her focus entirely to fashion design and illustration. She has described her work as “a combination of things I like, in the way I want to do them.”

In 1909, the twenty-something Dryden moved to New York City and spent her first year trying to garner interest in her drawings from fashion magazines. No magazines were interested, however, and many were harsh in their criticisms, with Vogue‘s rejection delivering the biggest disappointment to the young artist. Less than a year later, Condé Nast Publications took over the management of Vogue, leading it in a new direction. After seeing Dryden’s illustrations, the fashion editor was instructed to contact the artist immediately. A contract was signed, leading to a 13 year collaboration between the artist and the magazine. From 1910-1923, Helen Dryden produced many fashion illustrations and cover artwork for Vogue magazine.

Dryden’s “essentially romantic style produced some of the most appealing, yet fantastical images on Vogue covers, frequently depicting imagined rather than realistic representations of dress.” (Source) During this prolific working period, Dryden also created illustrations for other Condé Nast publications including Vanity Fair and House and Garden. In mid-1923, Dryden stopped working for Vogue and began designing wallpaper patterns and illustrating advertisements for companies that made dress fabrics, towels, and hats. During the late 1920s, she ventured into Cubism as a “reflection of modernity and industry” in her cover designs for the fashion and dressmaking magazine The Delineator.

In addition to her work as an illustrator, Helen Dryden also launched a successful career as a costume designer in 1914, creating scenery and costumes for various stage plays. Her costume designs for the fanciful Victor Hugo romance Clair de Lune, starring Lionel and Ethel Barrymore, were given the same credit as the actors for the play’s success.

In 1915, Dryden married fellow artist John Wentworth Russell, but the marriage ended after one year. She also had a short term relationship with actor John Davidson. She never had a relationship that lasted more than a year and never had any children.

In 1925, Dryden turned her attention to industrial design, leading to the production of tableware, lamps, and other housewares for the Revere Corporation. Earning a rather large salary, she continued her employment with the Dura Company until the stock market crashed in 1929, at which time she was replaced by automotive designer George W. Walker.

Struggling to recover from this blow, she went to work for Raymond Loewy of the Studebaker car company from 1935 to 1938, where she earned an annual salary of $100,000 ($2,287,234 in 2025 dollars) designing car interiors. Her work on the 1936 Studebaker Dictator and President established Dryden as an important 20th century industrial designer, with the press marveling that a woman had achieved such eminence in the field of mechanical engineering. With an unusual effort to publicize her as one of the few women in the automotive field, Dryden was considered one of the top industrial designers of the time, earning her recognition as America’s “first lady of design” by Life magazine. She continued working with Loewy through 1940.

After 1940, however, Dryden disappeared from the public eye and her career mysteriously faded as she was suddenly living on welfare in a hotel in New York City’s East Village. While the exact details are unclear, Dryden is known to have suffered a mental health crisis around this time. It has been speculated that the triggering events were the death of her two sisters and brother in the 1930s. By 1956, she was residing in a $10-a-week hotel room paid for by the city’s Welfare Department. In 1966, she was involuntarily committed to the Pilgrim State Hospital in Brentwood, New York, where she died in October 1972. She was in her late 80s or early 90s at the time of her death.

It is truly a very sad story. Helen Dryden went from being a well known designer and one of the highest paid women of her time to dying broke in obscurity. How does that happen? In her three years of employment at Studebaker, she earned the equivalent of $7,000,000 in today’s currency. What happened to her money? I feel like there was something nefarious going on.

About the Art: “Hot Weather Fashions Number”–Vogue Cover July 1, 1919

“Hot Weather Fashions Number”(or “How the Wind Blows”) is the original Vogue magazine illustration that appeared on the cover of the July 1, 1919, issue. The illustration was created with watercolors, gouache, and pencil on a Whatman’s watercolour sketching board measuring 13.25 x 17.5 in (33.5 x 44.5 cm) with the artist’s signature in the lower right corner. For the price of $63,000, you can purchase the original artwork.

Blending Art Nouveau line work with the emerging geometric appeal of the Art Deco movement, the illustration features a sophisticated woman wearing a stylish dark patterned gown and flowing scarf, holding a vibrant orange parasol, standing in the stylized rippling waves of the seaside. This “Hot Weather Fashions” issue of Vogue focused on seasonal summer styles, beachwear, and post-war resort preparations. This illustration became of Dryden’s most prominent and influential magazine covers during the golden age of illustrated covers.

Helpful Links:

• Wikipedia: Helen Dryden
• Wikimedia Commons: Vogue cover, July 1st, 1919, by Helen Dryden
• Vogue Archive: July 1, 1919
• Illustration History: Helen Dryden
• Cooper Hewitt: Helen Who?? Her Life as a Fashion Illustrator, Costume Director, And…(Part One)

About My Outfit

Oh my gosh, this outfit really gave me the giggles. I had so much fun putting it together and researching this newly thrifted early 2000s vintage dress. The brand is KLOZ Plus, which was a popular mid level boutique clothing brand from the 1980s through the early 2000s. The brand focused on plus sizes 1X to 3X with a bohemian artsy vibe. Their designs featured lightweight rayons, sheer chiffons, and crinkle fabrics in a variety of garments from floral dusters and floaty kimonos to sheer tunics and whimsical maxi dresses. Dresses similar to mine would have sold in boutiques for around $90-$120 in 2000 ($175-$230 in 2026). These vintage styles currently fetch around $25-$60 on the resale market. I paid $9 at the thrift store.

When I spotted the dress, I was immediately drawn to it by a sense of teenage nostalgia. An oversized drapey dress made from a crinkly rayon fabric in dark (almost black) navy blue with a big adorable daisy print is exactly the thing I would have bought for myself in the late 1990s. By the early 2000s, as grunge music solidified its place in pop culture, a new fashion aesthetic emerged…grunge-boho. Except young Shelbee was already wearing it in 1989! By 1992, I definitely owned a few dresses just like this one and I very likely wore them with my knee high Doc Martens. Grunge-boho. Who knew?

The dark background splattered with the big white daisies very closely resembles the dress the woman is wearing in today’s artwork. Since my dress is similar in color and print, it made a great starting point for satisfying this dress up challenge.

Now I needed to add all the little details. First, the shoes. The lady is wearing skin-toned shoes that lace all the way up to her knees. I almost didn’t have the perfect shoes. But then I did! I had put these tan gladiator sandals into a donation bag when I cleaned my closet room a few weeks ago. Luckily, I hadn’t moved the bags out of the house yet so the sandals were saved from being passed on. For now. They don’t offer much support for my old feet so I rarely have a desire to wear them but they are cute and work well with my current old lady boho aesthetic. Plus it’s always really fun to have just the perfect random thing for a game of dress up!

Since I had committed to basically recreating the outfit in the artwork, I needed to add a pink scarf. When it comes to my personal style, I believe more is better so I incorporated two pink scarves. I used a newly thrifted silk square tasseled scarf as a belt and then I tied one of my favorite preloved scarves to the handle of my parasol. Of course, I have my parasol! I added a long white crochet lace duster vest to copy whatever that white and blue fringey thing is that’s hanging down the lady’s back. Finally, I added earrings and necklaces that resemble the colors and textures of sea glass and topped off the outfit with my flower trimmed straw bonnet. I tied the little pink ribbon bow right in front to mimic that black plume coming out of the woman’s turban.

And when it was all done and I looked through the resulting photos, I really did have a good chuckle. It had all the nostalgia and carefree whimsy that I wanted it to have for this round of Style Imitating Art.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my dress up game as much as I enjoyed it playing dress up. Be sure to check out how Salazar and Marsha have styled their outfits inspired by this vintage Vogue illustration. If you would like to participate in this round of Style Imitating Art and have your outfit included in Salazar’s round up post on Wednesday, July 29, 2026, please be sure to send your photos to her at 14shadesofgreyblog@gmail.com by 10:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday, July 28, 2026.

Happy styling!

Shelbee