Design veteran Geoffrey Beene dies of pneumonia at 77

NEW YORK -- Geoffrey Beene, the award-winning designer whose simple, classic styles for men and women put him at the forefront of American fashion, died Tuesday at 77. Beene died at his home of complications of pneumonia, according to Russell Nardozza, vice president of Geoffrey Beene Inc.\nThe designer launched his own company on a shoestring budget in 1963 and turned it into a fashion empire. Along with Bill Blass, Beene was regarded as one of the godfathers of American sportswear. Beene, who had planned to be a doctor and found himself daydreaming instead about fashions, was an eight-time winner of the Coty Fashion Critics Award and the first American designer to show his clothes in Milan. He was widely hailed for his innovative and iconoclastic work.\n"A designer's designer, Geoffrey Beene is one of the most artistic and individual of fashion's creators," read the plaque given to him on New York's Fashion Center Walk of Fame. A 1993 New York Times article described him as "an artist who chooses to work in cloth."\nBeene signature style was a reflection of his outlook on longevity. \n"The more you learn about clothes, the more you realize what has to be left off," he once said. "Simplification becomes a very complicated procedure."\nBeene's trademark dressy but comfortable clothing was perhaps best epitomized by a sequined evening dress/football jersey in his 1967 collection. That same year, he designed the wedding dress for first daughter Lynda Bird Johnson.\nBorn in Haynesville, La., Beene was a premed student at Tulane University when he found himself sketching gowns while became bored during lectures. His first job in the industry came when he signed on as an assistant in the display department of the downtown Los Angeles branch of I. Magnin, the clothing store. A company executive recognized his talent and encouraged Beene to get a job in fashion. He moved to New York City in 1947, enrolled at the Traphagen School of Fashion, and then went off to Paris to learn the business. He returned to New York and got his first big break in 1954, a job designing for Teal Traina and his fledgling firm.\nIn 1963, Beene opened his own company in a champagne-colored showroom on Seventh Avenue, and the business was an instant success. In its first year, Geoffrey Beene Inc. sold $500,000 worth of clothes, a figure that would quadruple in just two years. The next year he won the first of his Coty Awards.\n"He was a quiet gentleman, but he had this uncompromising and liberating attitude toward clothes," said Valerie Steele, director of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "I think his peers recognized the artistry and amazing technical skills that went into what he did."\nHe became a New York institution as well, entertaining friends in his Upper East Side apartment or tending orchids in the greenhouse at his Oyster Bay getaway home. The genteel Beene even engaged in one of the great New York traditions -- the feud -- as he battled for years with Women's Wear Daily, the industry bible.\nNo funeral services are planned, said Narozza. He is survived by a sister, Barbara Ann Wellman of Conroe, Texas.