Gladys became involved in sketching and fashion design in her early teens when she was confined to bed with osteomyelitis. In 1927 she went to New York City with a foot-operated sewing machine and the goal of becoming a designer. By the end of the year she had won a prize in a costume designing contest, and in 1928 began a nationally distributed comic strip Gay and Her Gang. To complement her comic strips and also the fashion features she contributed to newspapers, she introduced cut-out paper fashion models with accompanying clothing styles, first for Flapper Fanny and later for Mopsy. These stimulated an awareness of fashion among many teenage girls of the time.
Mopsy was patterned after Gladys, both in appearance and manner – pert and petite, topped off by a thick mop of dark hair. The concept and name originated from a casual remark by Rube Goldberg that Gladys’s own hair “looked like a mop.” At the time she began her career as a cartoonist, there were very few women in this profession.
Gladys became involved in sketching and fashion design in her early teens when she was confined to bed with osteomyelitis. In 1927 she went to New York City with a foot-operated sewing machine and the goal of becoming a designer. By the end of the year she had won a prize in a costume designing contest, and in 1928 began a nationally distributed comic strip Gay and Her Gang. To complement her comic strips and also the fashion features she contributed to newspapers, she introduced cut-out paper fashion models with accompanying clothing styles, first for Flapper Fanny and later for Mopsy. These stimulated an awareness of fashion among many teenage girls of the time.
Mopsy was patterned after Gladys, both in appearance and manner – pert and petite, topped off by a thick mop of dark hair. The concept and name originated from a casual remark by Rube Goldberg that Gladys’s own hair “looked like a mop.” At the time she began her career as a cartoonist, there were very few women in this profession.