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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Born in New York City, Ethel Traphagen had a distinguished career in New York state as a fashion designer and founder, with her artist-husband, William R. Leigh, of The Traphagen School of Design at 1680 Broadway in New York City. They both taught at the school, and she served as Director.
Traphagen studied at Cooper Union Art School, the National Academy of Design, the Art Students League, and the New York School of Fine and Applied Art. She wrote and illustrated books on fashion design and was a teacher at Cooper Union Art School, Brooklyn Teachers Association, and New York University. At Cooper Union, one of her students was Lee Krasner who described Traphagen in her biography: "She had made an impact in the world of fashion and is said to have brought attention to the United States as a fashion center. She worked then on the staff of the Ladies' Home Journal and Dress Magazine. She also resurrected and depicted "costumes of Indian maidens" and collected nineteenth-century garments." Krasner described Traphagen's husband as "a painter who fiercely opposed modernism."
Traphagen was the author of several books including Costume Design and Illustration and Fashion Work as a Career.
In 1937, she and her husband, William R. Leigh, traveled to Canyon de Chelly in Arizona where they both
painted.
Sources:
Peter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art
Donald Hagerty, Canyon de Chelly: 100 Years of Painting and Photography
Gail Levin, Lee Krasner: A Biography, p. 44
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