The collection consists of five photograph albums and two scrapbooks compiled by the designer, artist, style arbiter, and Parsons School of Design faculty member, administrator and president Van Day Truex. A third scrapbook, annotated by Parsons faculty member Stanley Barrows, documents Truex's and Parsons School of Design president William Odom's Parisian apartments in the 1930s, but it is unclear if Truex was a compiler or the sole compiler of the scrapbook, which was donated to The New School Archives, along with the other seven albums, by the Estate of Adam Lewis, a design historian.

The chronological photograph albums document Truex's travels in Europe (predominantly France and Italy), Mexico, Tunisia, Morocco, and the United States, and depict many friends and acquaintances, leisure activities, and social gatherings in upscale settings. Places, dates and names of individuals in photographs are usually identified in handwritten captions. As Truex emphasizes in his 1971 Smithsonian Archives of American Art interview with Paul Cummings, he "grew up in Paris," residing there from the age of 21 until his mid-30s; the predominance of Europe in the two pre-1940s albums reflects this. Truex left Paris, along with the rest of the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (now, Parsons School of Design) administration and students in 1939. He later returned to France, where he renovated a house in the village of Gordes, documented in the post-World War Two albums.

Truex is mainly known for his interior design work and his design work for Tiffany & Company in his later years. This collection documents Truex's facility as a photographer, as well. While the photograph albums document his travels and friendships, these are not ordinary snapshots by an amateur photographer; rather, they demonstrate an understanding and feel for composition and lighting, and many of the shots would not look out of place in a magazine. New School Archives staff believe either Truex developed the film himself or had it developed by someone with access to photograph developing equipment and a darkroom. The photographs do not appear to have been developed through traditional commercial photographic processing. It is unknown when Truex assembled the albums and scrapbooks.

The albums document international celebrities with whom Truex associated, such as Noel Coward, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and Elsa Schiaparelli; socialites, philanthropists, and designers, many with connections to Parsons School of Design, such as alumnus Joseph B. Platt, and Parsons School of Design trustees, such as Eleanor Brown. Elsie de Wolfe (Lady Mendl) is well represented, depicted at gatherings at her home, Villa Trianon. While Truex and many other members of his pre-Stone Wall generation did not publicly identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, the albums document an upper class, trans-Atlantic social milieu in which queer people seem well-represented. Additionally, the scrapbooks contain numerous photographs of classically attractive men in bathing attire.

Appraiser Stuart Lutz observes, "I find it remarkable that the [albums and] scrapbooks survived. Surely many photographs of Twentieth Century gay life (even if there was a mere undercurrent of gay life) were destroyed by family and friends after the photographer died to save people from embarrassment . . . The albums are a reflection of a mid-Twentieth Century gay life that either was not widely photographed because it was verboten, or the scrapbooks were later demolished by family, so no record survives."

Notably absent from the albums are successive New York School of Fine and Applied Art presidents Frank Alvah Parsons (represented in one photograph, reclining in a robe at the Lido in Venice) and William Odom (represented in one set of photographs). This may indicate that Parsons and Odom socialized with a different set of people from Truex.

The scrapbooks are divided topically rather than strictly chronologically. A general scrapbook predominantly documents Truex's career as an artist and illustrator, an often overlooked aspect of his life and career. During his lifetime, Truex's artwork was exhibited in several New York galleries. Scrapbook contents include reproductions of his ink wash drawings, newspaper clippings of reviews, exhibition programs, and photographs of his gallery shows. This scrapbook also contains portraits of Truex, photographs and clippings about his homes, and other print media in which he appears.

A second scrapbook is devoted to the Tennessee-born singer and actress Grace Moore, a client and friend of Truex.

A third scrapbook documents residences of Van Day Truex, as well as Parsons School of Design president and design historian William Odom in Paris, and other residential interiors, as well as clippings demonstrating specific European architectural and interior design styles. The compilation by students of clippings depicting furnishings and interior architecture was a standard pedagogical activity at Parsons School of Design until the late 1960s. This scrapbook bears annotations by Parsons alumnus and faculty member Stanley Barrows (1914-1995), as the handwriting, underlining, and style of annotation identically matches the same occurences in the Stanley Barrows papers (KA.0002.01). Inscriptions in the scrapbook indicate Barrows purchased the scrapbook in April 1967 from a Parsons School of Design library book sale at a time of curricular upheaval, and the architectural styles and furnishings documented in the scrapbook, as well as the act of maintaining such a scrapbook as a visual tool, would have been considered outdated by college leadership and many faculty members. According to the donor, Barrows returned this salvaged scrapbook to Truex soon after purchasing it at the book sale. Barrows left Parsons School of Design in 1968.