Edward Gorey, the fantastic illustrator and writer was a lover of ballet (for many years, he religiously attended all performances of the New York City Ballet), fur coats, tennis shoes, and cats, of which he had many.
Gorey (1925 – 2000) was the king of macabre — black and white, dark and seeping in irony. He was Tim Burton before Tim Burton. The Gashlycrumb Tinies and The Doubtful Guest as well as the illustrations from T.S. Eliot’s Cats remain some of his most well-known work.
He began his career in the early 1950s, working for Doubleday, illustrating book covers. Around the same time, he started writing and illustrating his own books under anagrams of his own first and last name. Ogdred Weary, Dogear Wryde, Ms. Regera Dowdy were just a few of the dozens of pen names he used.
While some people automatically associate Gorey with England because of his gothic aesthetic and obsession with illustrating Victorian-like figures, he was actually a New Yorker through and through. He may have been born in Chicago and died in Cape Code, but it was New York that truly made his career. The New York Times credited bookstore owner Andreas Brown and his store, the Gotham Book Mart, with launching Gorey’s career, citing: “it became the central clearing house for Mr. Gorey, presenting exhibitions of his work in the store’s gallery and eventually turning him into an international celebrity.”
Naturally, Gorey is still an inspiration fashion-wise. Looking at the way he dressed, and the way his characters were outfitted gives way to the artist’s deeply detailed obsession with the sartorial world. In fact, one time Gorey even designed costumes for the 1977 Broadway revival of Dracula, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design.
I want to live inside one of his illustrations – particularly the one with the headless men wearing coats.
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