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    Mary McFadden, Celebrated Designer of Shimmering Dresses, Dies at 85

    She took symbols from ancient cultures and translated them into intricate embroideries, beadings and paintings on clothes worn by the likes of Jacqueline Onassis.Mary McFadden, a fashion designer who was famous not just for her shimmering, pleated dresses, which cascaded freely to the floor, but also for her visage — stark white Kabuki-style makeup and bluntly cut ebony hair — died on Friday at her home in Southampton, N.Y. She was 85.Her brother John McFadden said the cause was myeloma dysplasia.Ms. McFadden took symbols from ancient cultures — the phoenix from China, shadow puppets from Indonesia — and translated them into intricate embroideries, beadings and paintings on her clothes.At Mary McFadden Inc., the company she ran from 1976 to 2002, she designed pleated dresses that she said she wanted to fall “like liquid gold” down a woman’s body. They were similar to those made by Mariano Fortuny and Henriette Negrin early in the 20th century, but they were made from a synthetic charmeuse that she sourced in Australia, dyed in Japan and machine-pressed in the United States — a fabric she patented in 1975 and called Marii.She designed dresses that resembled those worn by the women sculpted on the caryatids at the Acropolis in Greece, and her models imitated their poses for fashion shoots under the pediment of the New York Public Library. Jacqueline Onassis was among those who wore McFadden gowns.Ms. McFadden was the first female president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. She served in that position from 1982 to 1983.The author, pianist and composer Christopher Mason said that he often ran into Ms. McFadden in the late 1980s and ’90s, and that he once found himself seated next to her at a dinner hosted by the Irish model Maxime de la Falaise for her daughter, Loulou.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Tory Burch, Rachel Scott, and the Female Fashion Figures Making Waves

    One year ago, when it was announced that Sarah Burton was leaving Alexander McQueen after 26 years (13 as creative director), that she would be replaced by a young guy named Seán McGirr, and that that meant that all of the designers at Kering, the second largest fashion group in the world, would be men, the news caused a rare moment of breast-beating and introspection in the fashion world. Why were all the big jobs going to men? Why did there seem to be so few women designers?Well, on Monday it turned out that Ms. Burton, and her special kind of poetic power-through-tailoring, would be staging a return, when LVMH named her creative director of Givenchy. That happened to be the same day Tory Burch held a show in New York that solidified her position as one of the tent-pole labels of the week. It was the same day Rachel Scott unveiled a Diotima show that confirmed her as one of the most exciting young designers in the city.All three events functioned as a reminder that not only are there women designers — there are great ones. Perhaps it’s time to focus on them. You see interesting things when you do. Ms. Burch being a prime example.For the last few years she has been pushing herself out of the comfort zone of Lee Radziwill-on-vacation caftans and ballet flats on which she made her name, surprising a fashion world that had largely pigeonholed her as a designer of suburban chic. Instead she has made an increasingly convincing case that she is the Claire McCardell of her generation, a legitimate heir to the woman who helped invent American sportswear.This season was no different, the combination of her main lines and Tory Sport, which used to be designed as two separate collections, leading her to … well, a combination of sport and style that seemed particularly apropos in a post-Olympics, post-WFH world.Tory Burch, spring 2025Swipe for More →Tory BurchYuki Iwamura/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Peter Nygard Sentenced to 11 Years in Prison for Sexual Assault

    Mr. Nygard was convicted in Toronto of sexually assaulting four women in his company’s headquarters. He also faces trials in Montreal, Winnipeg and New York.The hearing was meant to decide a prison sentence for a convicted rapist, Peter Nygard, the former Canadian fashion mogul. But for a woman who had been sexually assaulted by Mr. Nygard, being one of his victims had long made her life a prison.The trauma caused by the attack in the late 1980s, when she was 21, irreparably stunted her life, the woman told a Toronto courtroom during Mr. Nygard’s two-day sentencing hearing that began in July and was postponed until Monday.It shattered her career as a clothing designer and television presenter, caused debilitating health problems and left lasting psychological wounds, she said. “I live now still in a veil of sadness,” said the woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban. “It breaks my heart to reflect upon the derailment of my entire life.”After listening to statements from victims and from Mr. Nygard’s defense, a judge sentenced Mr. Nygard to 11 years in prison for sexually assaulting four women, one of whom was a teenager at the time of the attack. Because of the time he has spent in custody since his arrest, Mr. Nygard has about seven years remaining in his sentence and will be eligible for parole in about two years.“Peter Nygard is a sexual predator,” said Justice Robert Goldstein of the Superior Court of Ontario, delivering his sentence before a full courtroom. “He is also a Canadian success story gone wrong.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    During NYFW, Jill Biden, Anna Wintour and More March for Voting Awareness

    Jill Biden, Anna Wintour and top American designers participated in a voting awareness march at the onset of New York Fashion Week.Morning rush hour in Midtown Manhattan slowed to a halt on Friday as nearly 1,000 fashion-industry professionals walked up Broadway in a march meant to urge people to vote on Election Day in November.The march, held at the onset of New York Fashion Week, was organized by a group that included the Council of Fashion Designers of America; I Am a Voter, an organization that promotes civic engagement; and Vogue. The event was billed as bipartisan, but an appearance by Jill Biden, the first lady, and a Harris-Walz campaign scarf worn discreetly by Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, were among the signs of an underlying Democratic tilt.The march started outside the Macy’s store in Herald Square, where designers, including Tory Burch, Brandon Blackwood, Joseph Altuzarra and Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hr4ernandez gathered with fashion editors and garment industry workers before the crowd walked roughly six blocks to Bryant Park, chanting “V-O-T-E, vote, vote, vote” along the way.Anna Wintour of Vogue with the designer Thom Browne. On Ms. Wintour’s bag is a scarf Mr. Browne designed in partnership with the Harris-Walz campaign.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesMost marchers wore Old Navy T-shirts that said “Fashion for our future” and were designed by Zac Posen, right, the brand’s chief creative officer.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThe designer Prabal Gurung marched with the group from Herald Square to Bryant Park.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesMost participants were uniformly dressed in Old Navy T-shirts designed by Zac Posen, the brand’s recently appointed chief creative officer, which were emblazoned with the slogan “Fashion for our future.” In a manner particular to fashion activism, the T-shirts were styled in myriad ways: tucked into pleated slacks, layered over slip dresses, knotted into crop tops.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Phil Donahue’s Neutral Wardrobe Kept the Focus on His Subjects

    The talk show host made a career of exposing polarizing topics while dressed in a relatively neutral wardrobe.The hoary tabloid axiom “if it bleeds, it leads” played no small part in the decades-long career of Phil Donahue, the pioneering host of “The Phil Donahue Show,” who died on Sunday at 88. Mr. Donahue spent three decades exposing subjects difficult for many Americans to confront — homosexuality, atheism, civil rights, consumer protection and abortion among them — to the disinfectant light of daytime TV.Central to Mr. Donahue’s success was his physical appearance. A conventionally handsome man with a boyish cast to his features, he had a perpetually merry look of bemusement and a virile, Kennedy-esque thatch of hair that grayed and then whitened as he aged in front of viewers in their living rooms. The aura Mr. Donahue conveyed was that of genial, avuncular family doctor who distracts you with innocuous banter as he rips off the bandage.Mr. Donahue deliberately played to that look with an on-air wardrobe that occasionally veered toward dapper — vested three-piece suits, wide ties, broad ’80s lapels — but was seldom, if ever, flamboyant. No “groovy” Merv Griffin shirts or turtlenecks for him, or the loud jackets and pastel polyester suits that were Johnny Carson’s sartorial signature. By comparison, Mr. Donahue’s style was resolutely neutral: He wore good clothes that fit his trim frame neatly but still seemed unremarkable, as though bought off a rack at J.C. Penney.When at times Mr. Donahue shed his jacket, it was to roam the studio aisles with his shirt sleeves rolled up, wielding the mic like a baton and putting it and the authority into the hands of audience members, whose questions he once remarked were often better than his.“Donahue’s subjects were often sharp, but his presentation was soft,” Wayne Munson, the author of “All Talk: The Talk Show in Media Culture,” said in an interview. Mr. Munson’s 1993 book took aim at a cultural form that, reviewers noted, blended interpersonal exchange and mediated spectacle and that would ultimately, as few then predicted, give way to all the yapping now consumed on social media.Mr. Donahue’s appearance, demeanor and habit of sharing the mic with audience members suggested his was never to be the authoritative voice of God but that of a neighbor.Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Best Looks of the Paris Olympic Opening Ceremony

    Paris raised the fashion stakes for the XXXIII Olympiad, and even with the rain, the result transformed the Seine into a watery runway. Even before the XXXIII Olympiad officially began, the litany of firsts was enormous. The first Olympics in Paris in a century. The first with equal gender participation. The first opening ceremony, ever, en pleine air. The first sponsored by a global luxury behemoth.The first Olympics in which fashion was so central to the identity of the host country itself.The opening ceremony featured not only a red carpet at the entrance but offered a full-blown runway show in the middle of vignettes devoted to the history and spirit of the country, including the French Revolution and the reconstruction of Notre Dame. As the monuments of Paris — the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, the Place de la Concorde — provided the backdrop to the event, style was at its heart.The bar was set as soon as it was announced that LVMH would be a premium partner. The goal, according to Thomas Jolly, the Games’ artistic director, was to “shed light on French savoir-faire,” broadly defined. They did it with cabaret and heavy metal, dance, acrobats and 1,800 outfits from brands both new and old. From the start, it was clear the fashion competition stakes would be raised for every other national team. At the opening ceremony for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, Team USA with flag bearer LeBron James (in foreground holding the large American flag).James Hill for The New York TimesIt’s tempting, during an Olympics, for teams to resort to the usual uniform of blazer and chino in national colors (yes, we’re looking at you, USA and Ralph Lauren), to default to the basic athleisure warm-up suit (hello, Italy in Emporio Armani and Canada in Lululemon) or to fall into a trap of national stereotype (Bermudans in Bermuda shorts).But by the time the Olympic cauldron had risen aloft beneath a hot-air balloon, and Celine Dion had begun to belt beneath the Eiffel Tower, and despite the rain that had pelted down requiring mass distribution of ponchos, it was clear the most memorable looks belonged to the teams who played their own fashion game. Not to mention the attendees who dressed for the occasion, and the brand that turned out to have been the secret couturière to the celebrity performers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Paris Olympics Party Features Zendaya, LeBron James, Snoop Dogg and More Stars

    Athletes, actors and fashion designers celebrated before the opening of the Games in Paris at a bash hosted by LVMH, the French luxury goods conglomerate.The French luxury conglomerate LVMH, which has spent about $163 million inserting itself into seemingly every nonsport aspect of the Olympics, held an opening ceremony of its own on Thursday night. Serena Williams, Jeremy Allen White, Charlize Theron, Mick Jagger, the French actor Omar Sy and Snoop Dogg were among the many starry guests who attended LVMH’s pre-party, grandly called the Prelude to the Olympics.As is so often the case when fashion meets branding meets a glitzy event, Anna Wintour was one of the evening’s co-hosts, sweeping serenely down the red carpet (actually more like a green running track) with the Australian director Baz Luhrmann on her arm. She wore a long glittery gown that Nicolas Ghesquière, the women’s creative designer for Louis Vuitton, “very kindly designed for me for tonight,” she said. Mr. Luhrmann wore denim pants and a denim shirt.Though a number of stars — Zendaya, LeBron James, Zac Efron, Elizabeth Banks — made it into the party at the Louis Vuitton Foundation without stopping, others gamely opined about fashion, sports and how the Olympics brings people together. Wearing a beautifully tailored non-LVMH suit and a pair of sneakers, the tennis star Novak Djokovic undercut his surly reputation with charming anecdotes in both French and English. (He said he had to take it easy — he was scheduled to play his first match, against Matthew Ebden of Australia, on Saturday.)Mr. Luhrmann said that the party represented the dissolving of boundaries among different kinds of celebrity. “We’re living in a world where, whether you come from popular music, fashion, sports — there’s no silo,” he said. “It’s all one great piece of theater.”“Sports stars are the new superstars,” Ms. Wintour said.It’s hard to overstate how deeply entwined the 2024 games are with LVMH, the massive company whose brands include Louis Vuitton, Moët & Chandon, Tiffany and Sephora. LVMH’s jewelry workshop Chaumet designed the medals the athletes will receive. Louis Vuitton created the trunks the medals will be carried on, and the trays on which they will be presented.The outfits worn by the French athletes in the opening ceremony, including sleeveless jackets for women, were designed by the LVMH company Berluti, together with the French fashion editor Carine Roitfeld. Sephora, the LVMH cosmetics company, is sponsoring the Olympic torch relay, which will end when the games begin on Friday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Spotted at the RNC: Melania Trump, and Many Faux Ear Bandages

    As the Republican National Convention drew to a close, it painted a red, white and blue picture.On the final night of the Republican convention, just in time for her husband’s official nomination as his party’s presidential candidate, Melania Trump finally took her place by his side — sort of.She was the last Trump family member to make her entrance at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, stoking the will-she-or-won’t-she anticipation to the end, arriving well after Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who have also been largely absent during the campaign; Don Jr. and his fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle; Eric Trump and his wife, Lara; and Tiffany Trump and her husband, Michael Boulos. (Barron Trump, Donald Trump’s son with Melania, did not appear, but assorted grandchildren did.)She walked in alone, in a red suit and towering red heels, hair down, bestowing queenly waves on an adoring crowd.Melania Trump enters on the red carpet at the final night of the Republican convention.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIf the suit struck a chord, that may be because it had been seen before. Mrs. Trump had worn the ensemble — from Dior, with a New Look silhouette — in 2017, when, as first lady, she visited Paris with her husband for the Bastille Day celebrations. For anyone who remembers that suit, seeing it again was like sliding down a wormhole to the recent past when the Trumps occupied the White House — a further reminder, like the virtual White House projected behind Mr. Trump as he made his speech, of the point of the whole shebang.Mrs. Trump was offering something of a preview of how she may again play her part. (Not to mention the fact that, despite Mr. Trump’s statements about manufacturing in America and buying American, she has never seemed all that interested in that idea.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More