Mary McFadden, an award-winning designer, art collector and fashion innovator died Friday at her Southampton home. She was 85.
The cause was myeloma dysplasia, her brother, John McFadden, told The New York Times.
Often dubbed the “High Priestess of Fashion,” McFadden drew inspiration from ancient cultures and civilizations for her work, which was a combination of two of her “favorite things … fashion design and travel.”
Harold Koda, former curator-in-chief of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, described her as a “design archaeologist.”
Known for her easy-to-wear silhouettes, opulent beading, hand-painted silks and her patented “Marii” pleated fabric, McFadden created sensual and modern pieces for women who were “not afraid to forge [their] own path,” according to a press release for a retrospective of her work currently on display at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Marii — a synthetic charmeuse that originated in Australia, was dyed in Japan and then pleated in the U.S. — was made “to fall like liquid gold on the body, like Chinese silk,” she once explained.
Born in New York City in 1938, McFadden attended the Traphagen School of Fashion in New York City before studying at Sorbonne University in Paris and Columbia, back in the U.S.
She joined Christian Dior New York working as the fashion house’s director of public relations in 1962. By the early ’70s, she began to find success as a fashion designer, selling her designs at Henri Bendel, according to Vogue. In 1976, she won her first of many fashion awards, the Coty American Fashion Critics’ Awards.
Throughout the years, McFadden’s creations were displayed in museums across the U.S.; shown on runways in New York, London, Tokyo, Russia, India, and South and Central America; and worn by an impressive list of fashion icons — including Jackeline Kenney Onassis, Iman and Gloria Steinem.
In 1982, she became the first woman to head the Council of Fashion Designers of America, or CFDA, when she helped to “implement concrete processes and marketing plans,” the organization said in an online tribute, calling McFadden a “true American fashion original.”
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