were considered suitable for Harlem, but not the East Side (where the Fashion Illustration classes were located). Fashion Illustration was viewed as a kind of poor relation to Anne Keagy’s Fashion Design, housed in another part of town. Miss Keagy’s department had air conditioning. Alan Gussow’s had fans that created a screaming hurricane and sent large sheets of paper, dripping with ink, flying around the room. Sometimes, if the doors were open, our work was sucked into the corridor and down the staircase. I loved the bedlam. I drew all day and at night I dreamed of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. I also experienced my first “block”. After years of drawing with a stick of graphite, a 6B pencil or a piece of charcoal, I found myself surrounded by students experimenting with oil wash, a technique I had never tried, and did not like. 156
The more I struggled, the worse it got. By mid – term I decided to return to pencils and brilliant colours and forget brushes and wishy– oily – washes. To my dismay, I found I was unable to find my old style. It was the most scary period of my life. I was ready to give up, go home and forget art, marry a boyfriend I was tired of and become a housewife. Fortunately my parents would not hear of this, came to New York for Christmas and talked sense into me. Around February, I began to invent my own version of the dreaded oil wash. Soaking paper with paint thinner (much cheaper than turpentine) I began drawing on the wet page with the 6B and the charcoal, smearing some lines with my fingers. Oil pastels, not thin oil paint were used for colour. It worked. After Parsons, I started drawing for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, and after a year
began to write. I am a hybrid, highly trained in drawing, and a self–taught writer; I draw fast though on a bad day my rubbish bin is full. I write, and rewrite, and re –rewrite very slowly. YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW Just as St. Martins moved this fall, from Charing Cross Road, so did the School of Fashion of Academy of Art University, from numerous locations around the City to one building at 625 Polk Street, near City Hall, Museums, the Opera and a concert hall. Only the m.f.a. studios remain on Montgomery Street. Our beautiful new home was built in 1912 as a German social club. The solid wood panelling, marble stairs, elegant fixtures and the exquisite glass atrium — where all the drawing classes are held — are a reminder of an earlier, more prosperous era. I spend many hours dropping in to the