New York, Sep 14 (EFE).- American designer and former Vogue editor Mary McFadden has died aged 85 from myeloma dysplasia, her family told local media on Saturday.
McFadden became an icon of New York fashion not only for her designs but also for her personal style: always with her face covered in white makeup and short hair.
At Mary McFadden Inc., the company she ran from 1976 to 2002, she designed pleated dresses that she said fell “like liquid gold” down a woman’s body, reminiscent of 1920s style.
The most peculiar thing about these models was the material, as they were made from a synthetic charmeuse that came from Australia and was then dyed in Japan. This fabric was patented in 1975 and called Marii.
In her designs, McFadden took symbols from different cultures that she had seen on her many travels.
“It wasn’t just that her clothes reflected her own styles and interests, they were an extension of how she existed in the world,” Vogue magazine wrote today about McFadden, who died on Friday at her home in Long Island, New York.
Among her milestones is becoming the first female president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, a position she held from 1982 to 1983.
McFadden, who was married several times, was a jet-setter and passionate about the arts.
At the age of 16, her grandmother gave her three diamond bracelets. A few years later, in 1958, she met Salvador Dalí at a cocktail party in New York and struck a deal with him: her diamonds in exchange for some of his artworks, The New York Times reports today.
In 2009, McFadden’s designs were exhibited at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, as well as in the galleries of the Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.
Her work is currently the subject of the exhibition ‘Modern Ritual: The Art of Mary McFadden’, at Drexel University in Philadelphia. EFE
