Fifteen years after his death, Geoffrey Beene’s influence can still be seen in fashion.
The independent thinker had a reputation for being an outlier in the fashion world, despite winning eight Coty awards — more than any other designer. His reputation for exquisite tailoring stemmed from his understanding of the human body. As a medical student, Beene’s career path was rerouted after seeing a Life magazine cover of Christian Dior’s New Look and determining that fashion was more enthralling than medicine.
After attending the Traphagen School of Fashion and the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, Beene had a stint at Molyneux before returning to New York in 1949. During his studies in Paris, he met Dior, followed the designer’s work and studied his designs. After exploring a Dior exhibition at the Louvre multiple times, Beene realized that Dior “only designed from the waistband up. Below the waist, he was lost. It never moved. It was simply implied.” So Beene decided that he would design for the entire body, he said in 2000. “The body beautiful is a constant. You can never get away from it and that’s what I design for,” Beene said at that time.
On Seventh Avenue,
The independent thinker had a reputation for being an outlier in the fashion world, despite winning eight Coty awards — more than any other designer. His reputation for exquisite tailoring stemmed from his understanding of the human body. As a medical student, Beene’s career path was rerouted after seeing a Life magazine cover of Christian Dior’s New Look and determining that fashion was more enthralling than medicine.
After attending the Traphagen School of Fashion and the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, Beene had a stint at Molyneux before returning to New York in 1949. During his studies in Paris, he met Dior, followed the designer’s work and studied his designs. After exploring a Dior exhibition at the Louvre multiple times, Beene realized that Dior “only designed from the waistband up. Below the waist, he was lost. It never moved. It was simply implied.” So Beene decided that he would design for the entire body, he said in 2000. “The body beautiful is a constant. You can never get away from it and that’s what I design for,” Beene said at that time.
On Seventh Avenue,