Dorothy Hood

Known for her full-page ads for Lord & Taylor from the 1930s to the ‘60s, Dorothy Hood (1905- 1970) was a master at suggesting textures—satin, fur, velvet, leather, sparkling jewelry—that printers worked hard to reproduce in magazines and newspapers. Her tools were a tube of black watercolor and India Ink. Her line was fluid and her wash technique seemingly effortless. The head illustrator for Lord & Taylor, she established the iconic sketching style for the store’s advertisements. In her obituary, The New York Times described her influence: “The Hood girl became, for a time, almost as talked-about a style as the Gibson Girl.”