Geoffrey Beene
About
the designers
Geoffrey Beene, the American fashion designer born in 1927, loved movement and adored bodies in action.
Benne Planned to be a doctor like his grandfather and enrolled in medical courses at Tulane University, in New Orleans. However, his interest waned when the classes discussed vivisection and cadavers. So he dropped out, moved to California, took a temporary display job in the I Magnin store in Los Angeles in 1945.
The Look
Beene made strong impressions with his courteous manner as well as his highly original style. On the one hand, he was a champion of minimalist design. The short, A-line dresses and body-contoured jumpsuits he was known for were marvels of cut and proportion. At the same time, his evening collections featured layers of fabrics and prints, some of them embroidered with dots and trimmed with delicate lace. Everything he designed had a hand-crafted, artisan’s quality that made more familiar-looking clothes seem predictable. Beene was among the first designers of his level to use fine-quality rayon and other synthetic fabrics for his collections, partly because they resisted wrinkles. He sometimes worked with Asian manufacturers to create his own prints. One memorable fabric reproduced the scales of a shark’s skin. Beene’s view of style was more about function than fad. He also cautioned against getting too concerned with the latest trends. His clothes were structured but never rigid and rely on the craftsmanship of careful detail. Many of his designs contained an element of fantasy. He had a casual approach to opulent fabrics, successfully blending them with less expensive materials, for example flannel trimmed with rhinestones, quilted ticking cotton with chiffon, or jersey with taffeta. He did much to blur the difference between sportswear and other clothes, like his strapless Grecian draped tennis frocks, or jogging clothes with glittering piping. He made rich and imaginative clothes and showed his creativity by designing with a relaxed elegance. From his high-priced couture collections, to his lower priced Beene Boutique and Bazaar lines, as well as his Beene Bag sportswear line, he offered flexible wardrobes of inter-related pieces. His colours could be bright and bracing like red, or earthy and subtle.