Of all the fashion illustrators who came to prominence in Paris during Les Années Folles – the period leading up to WWI - Drian is the one who kept his cool. The wave of Orientalism that swept through the city with the arrival of the Ballets Russes, Diaghilev and Nijinsky in 1909, and the revolution in taste inspired by the couturier Paul Poiret (in what sometimes looked to be a one-man challenge to the fragrant, pastel-hued sensibilities of the Edwardian period) had a profound effect not only on fashion, but on the way it was depicted, and ultimately understood, by an eager audience.
The explosion of colour and pattern and the adoption of theatrical, screen-like backgrounds and distorted perspectives became part of the fashion illustrator’s lingua franca. Drian, though he can hardly have been unaware of this revolution, was not in step with it; he drew what he saw. Working with live models sporting the latest fashions from Worth, Doucet and deBeer, he rendered proud, but recognisable, beauties (just look at the neatly posed feet and consider how they take the weight of the body, or at the tautly curved neck as the head turns away). As his peers adopted ever more stylised atitudes, Drian developed an elegant, descriptive line, quite his own In many ways he was a natural successor to Boldini in his grand manner, but a Boldini for the new age of print media. His linear, romantic naturalism and graphic sensibility would also pave the way for the masters of a later generation, Eric and Gruau.
He was born Adrien Désiré Étienne, in Bulgnéville in the Lorraine region of France, in 1885. After studying at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he adopted the pseudonym Drian, he quickly established himself as one of the leading illustrators in the growing number of exclusive publications dedicated to fashion. He was not among the seven original “Knights of The Bracelet” brought into Gazette du Bon Ton by Lucien Vogel, but he became a regular contributor as he would for Vogel’s short lived Les Feuillets d’Art and Tom Antongini’s Journal des Dames et des Modes.
After the war, Drian continued to work with the leading fashion magazines such as L’Illustration and Femina in France and, in 1921, he was introduced with some fanfare to the American readers of Harper’s Bazar (the second ‘a’ was added only later, in 1929). ‘He has consented,’ announced a gushing editor’s letter, ‘to illustrate frequent short stories, and to present to our readers his intimate glimpses of Parisian life.’ He also increasingly worked outside the sphere of fashion, illustrating novels, fairytales and short stories by, among others, Perrault, Jean Lorrain and Sacha Guitry.
As his reputation as an artist and taste maker grew, (in his book The Glass of Fashion, Cecil Beaton claimed that Drian, along with Picasso’s early benefactress, Eugenia Errazuriz, was ’one of the few who had a genius for knowing exactly where to place furniture in a room’ ) Drian took on a broad range of comissions: He designed windows for the department store Lord and Taylor in America, a spectacular mirrored office for the couturier Molyneux in Paris, and murals and screens for the legendary interior designer Elsie de Wolfe. Indeed it was Drian’s portrait of de Wolfe bestriding the Atlantic that gazed from the roof of her Versailles showplace La Villa Trianon. He also was a frequent collaborator with the actress /performer Cecile Sorel, for whom he designed costumes and sets for her appearance at the Casino de Paris.
He never entirely abandoned the world of fashion. In 1937 he recorded what may be the first celebrity fashion show, when the Society IT girls Gloria Guinness and Lady Thelma Furness designed and modelled a collection in Harrods in London.With his ever expanding network of social contacts, it was perhaps inevitable that his last years were spent principally as a portrait painter. His large scale oils depicting society beauties and captains of industry were as flattering as they were popular, though they often lacked the energy and verve of his graphic work.
Drian, who died in 1961, holds a unique place in the history of fashion illustration, bridging the gap between the great stylists of the pre World War I era and the studied ease of the mid-century masters. ‘To me he was the greatest,’ said Gruau, ‘a span above the others, Eric, Lepape, Marty, Benito.’
So well written, David, about such a brilliant artist.
May those who pass for fashion illustrators today note how to draw hands and - as you said - the foot that takes the weight.
Thank you.
Really interesting. Thank you.