[Deathwatch] Geoffrey Beene, fashion designer, 77

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Fashion designer Geoffrey Beene dies 
Designer regarded as a godfather of American sportswear
Tuesday, September 28, 2004 Posted: 6:56 PM EDT (2256 GMT) 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/09/28/beene.obit.ap/index.html

NEW YORK -- Geoffrey Beene, the award-winning designer whose simple,
classic styles for men and women put him at the forefront of American
fashion, died Tuesday at 77.

Beene died at his home of complications of pneumonia, according to
Russell Nardozza, vice president of Geoffrey Beene Inc.

The designer launched his own company on a shoestring budget in 1963
and turned it into a fashion empire. Along with Bill Blass, Beene was
regarded as one of the godfathers of American sportswear.

Beene, who had planned to be a doctor and found himself daydreaming
instead about fashions, was an eight-time winner of the Coty Fashion
Critics Award and the first American designer to show his clothes in
Milan. He was widely hailed for his innovative and iconoclastic work.

"A designer's designer, Geoffrey Beene is one of the most artistic and
individual of fashion's creators," read the plaque given to him on New
York's Fashion Center Walk of Fame. 

A 1993 New York Times article described him as "an artist who chooses
to work in cloth."

"The more you learn about clothes, the more you realize what has to be
left off," he once said. "Simplification becomes a very complicated
procedure."

Beene's trademark dressy but comfortable clothing was perhaps best
epitomized by a sequined evening dress/football jersey in his 1967
collection. That same year, he designed the wedding dress for first
daughter Lynda Bird Johnson.

Born in Haynesville, Louisiana, Beene was a premed student at Tulane
University when he found himself sketching gowns when he became bored
during lectures.

His first job in the industry came when he signed on as an assistant in
the display department of the downtown Los Angeles branch of I. Magnin,
the clothing store. A company executive recognized his talent, and
encouraged Beene to get a job in fashion.

He moved to New York City in 1947, enrolled at the Traphagen School of
Fashion, and then went off to Paris to learn the business. He returned
to New York and got his first big break in 1954, a job designing for
Teal Traina and his fledgling firm.

In 1963, Beene opened his own company in a champagne-colored showroom
on Seventh Avenue, and the business was an instant success. In its
first year, Geoffrey Beene Inc. sold $500,000 (euro 406,000) worth of
clothes, a figure that would quadruple in just two years. The next year
he won the first of his Coty Awards.

"He was a quiet gentleman, but he had this uncompromising and
liberating attitude toward clothes," said Valerie Steele, director of
the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "I think his peers
recognized the artistry and amazing technical skills that went into
what he did."

He became a New York institution as well, entertaining friends in his
apartment or tending orchids in the greenhouse at his Oyster Bay
getaway home. 

The genteel Beene even engaged in one of the great New York traditions
-- the feud -- as he battled for years with Women's Wear Daily, the
industry bible.