Drawing Inspiration: the art of fashion illustration is celebrated in a new retrospective

As an art form, illustration has been a victim of its own success – widely circulated yet very badly looked after. Fashion drawings have suffered worse than most. Seen primarily as a tool for chronicling clothes, many of the original sketches for Harper’s Bazaar were destroyed after publication. The art dealer Connie Gray has become a champion for the medium, spending much of her time hunting out original fashion plates from the leading exponents of the genre.