Geoffrey Beene

Geoffrey Beene (1924-2004) was one of the greatest American fashion designers of the 20th century and an iconic figure in the emergence of the American fashion industry after WWII. Beene was a pioneering force in a new generation of designers that sought to create an American style independent from Parisian Haute Couture. Geoffrey Beene was born in 1927 in Haynesville, Louisiana, into a family of doctors. He was expected to follow in their footsteps and dutifully enrolled in the medical program at Tulane University. Although he completed his first two years there, Beene dropped out and went to California, planning to attend the University of California. Instead, he took a job in the display department at I. Magnin, a chic clothing store, where he soon realized that his future lay in fashion. In 1947, Mr. Beene moved to New York to study at the Traphagen School of Fashion, and went on to Paris for intense training in sketching, designing and sewing. He learned tailoring from a master tailor who had worked for the couturier Edward Molyneux. Beene returned to New York in 1951, at a time when the American fashion industry largely existed to create designs inspired by European couture traditions. After several jobs with Seventh Avenue houses, in 1954, he went to work for Teal Traina, where he developed a reputation for originality. At the time, most American designers worked for large manufacturers, whose name appeared on the label, rather than the name of the designer. In 1963, Geoffrey Beene became one of the first American designers to launch his own line using his own name. His signature designs included elaborate seams, architectural construction, graphic black and white motifs and clinging silhouettes cut on the bias and were an immediate success. Just one year after designing his own line, Geoffrey Beene won his first of eight Coty Awards. In 1964 and 1965, he won the Neiman-Marcus Fashion Award. In addition to his multiple Coty awards, he was also the recipient of four awards from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, including one in 1998 for lifetime achievement. In addition to his multiple Coty awards, he was also the recipient of four awards from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, including one in 1998 for lifetime achievement (an award that in 2007 was renamed The Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award in his honor). Defying fashion conventions, he shocked the fashion world in 1966 with his use of grey flannel and wool jersey in evening wear. The following year he designed the wedding dress of Lynda Bird Johnson, eldest daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1974, Beene was also one of the first American designers to have a secondary line of affordable, casual, ready-to-wear clothes which he called Beene Bag. Two years later, he took the bold leap of showing his collection in Milan, a first for an American designer. Later on, he showed in Paris, Brussels, Vienna and Beijing. Geoffrey Beene is remembered as one of America’s most brilliant and most influential fashion designers. He is beloved for his creative and technical skills and for creating simple, comfortable and dressy women's wear. His contribution to American fashion was acknowledged in and out of the industry, by tastemakers like Agnes Gund, Paloma Picasso and Jacqueline Onassis. Mr. Beene’s clothes appear in many museums, including hundreds of his original garments now in the collection of The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

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