Indiana native and fashion mogul Bill Blass will be honored with his first career retrospective called Bill Blass: An American Designer at the IU Art Museum starting Saturday. The exhibit runs through Dec. 17.\nThe show is also being presented in conjunction with the Elizabeth Sage Historic Costume Collection, an IU organization evolving from a teaching resource in 1937 to the collection of over 19,000 items now.\nThe opening reception is 6:30 p.m. Friday at the museum. Cocktail attire is suggested.\nOtherwise the museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. and Sunday from 12 p.m. until 5 p.m. Exhibits are free and open to the public.\nBlass, who died last June 12 at age 79, was from Fort Wayne and made the arrangements before his death. The show spans his 50-plus year career in the fashion industry. In this retrospective of the fashion figures' work will be some of the most important ensembles he designed.\nKathleen Rowold is the curator of the Elizabeth Sage Historical Costume Collection, and is responsible for the Blass exhibit. Rowold said the planning for this event goes back to 1998 when she and three other friends and associates of Blass' approached him. \nAnne Bass, an Indianapolis native, is a devoted customer now living in New York. The other two were IU graduates who knew Blass through their work in the fashion industry and department stores carrying the label.\nThe foursome met with Blass in a lunch meeting that Rowold says lasted a couple of hours. Rowold says Blass was "Very, very witty, very charming, very bright, a great conversationalist." She continues "he was a grand gentleman in the old world sense…very chivalrous."
A Unique Exhibition\nMany exhibits will include sketches or other objects obtained through cooperation with the archives of Bill Blass Ltd., the Indianapolis Museum of Art, New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and various mixes of celebrity friends. More notable pieces of the exhibit will include gowns worn by former first lady Nancy Reagan, and vocalists Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston. Also included will be dresses worn by ABC News figure Barbara Walters and Hollywood legend Caludette Colbert.
One of the Greatest\nJoanna Davis is the museum's spokesperson, and in a letter released last month says the exhibit is "Featu-ring childhood drawings, sketches, and over 100 ensembles, this exhibition showcases fashion…It celebrates the unique and abiding place in fashion history of one of this country's greatest clothing designers and a beloved son of Indiana."\nDiana Vreeland was a fashion editor of "Harper's Bazaar", editor in chief of "Vogue" and considered to be a revered figure in fashion until her 1989 death and said of Blass' state heritage "Indiana, Indiana…don't tell me he is from Indiana. They all come from Indiana. It may be a horrible, snowy, deserty place -- I don't know, I've never been in the Middle West. But all of you who come from there - that I admire, that I love, and are good friends of mine all have this great sort of serenity of spirit."\nThe image of the American designer was forever changed when Blass left Indiana for New York City's Seventh Avenue where fashion designers worked in obscurity. Arriving in the Big Apple in 1941, Blass attended both the McDowell School of Costume Design and Fashion Illustration and Parson's School of Design.\nFor a period of World War II, Blass served in a camouflage design unit and after he returned, he landed a job with Anne Klein -- who later fired him. \nBlass then worked for two separate names as an assistant designer with David Crystal and Anna Miller between 1951 and 1959 when Miller merged with Maurice Rentner, which would become Bill Blass Ltd. In 1999 Blass sold the $700 million a year company for $50 million to a former chief finance officer.\nBlass stood apart in not only creating impressive ensembles, but he also fashioned a social and professional persona demanding attention. Eventually, he received recognition when his name began to appear on labels with the manufacturer.
A Design Pioneer\nIt could be said that part of Blass being drawn to fashion lay in a fascination with Hollywood during the Great Depression. \nSaid Blass, "…When the whole country was poor, the allure of Hollywood films was enormous. I was bewitched by the nervy glamour of the live that you saw in the films of Carole Lombard (another Fort Wayne native) Kay Francis, and Constance Bennett. I was seven or eight when I did my first sketches; they envisioned women with cigarettes and cocktails on a penthouse terrace in New York."\nThe man Geoffrey Beene calls "the King of Seventh Avenue," is looked upon as a definitive 20th century designer. He was one of the first Americans to design clothing for both men and women. His role in design eventually encompassed everything from sportswear and shoes to airline uniforms and Lincoln Town Cars.\nBut Blass, despite his hob-knobbing in the high-society world of fashion design, never seemed to lose his humanness. A socialite friend of Blass' named Pat Buckley told "New York Magazine" last July that she would go with Blass twice a year to watch five movies in one day. Buckley says the event took more planning than D-Day and says no one could imagine how much it took to plan the day. Says Buckley, "It's harder than a benefit. I don't remember any of the benefits that I attended with him. They're a total blur."\nHelen O'Hagan, a former vice president of Saks-Fifth Avenue from 1955-94, who produced tent sales for Blass for some 40 years also recounted in "New York Magazine" a time where she and Blass were traveling in California. They wanted to make breakfast in their hotel room the next morning. O'Hagan took Blass to his first Supermarket where he got lost in the ice cream aisle.\nThe talent of this glorified tailor lay in the simplicity of clothing enhancing the feminine form. In his earliest sketches as a teenager while attending South Side High School, he softened and changed men's clothing into women's wear. \nWomen's wear that former White House hostess Nancy Reagan said "I love his clothes, because they are comfortable, wearable and pretty."\nBy combining excellent and tailoring some would say was flawless, his fabrics included the highest quality of worsteds, gabardines, and wool crepes direct from Europe. \nHis clothing would become one of most well known lines in America. \nHis signature style presented itself in resort clothing and likewise in sculpted evening gowns. Through the decades he moved comfortably and didn't fall prey to fads and fancies. In 1996 Blass re-released a line for line reproduction of his Anna Miller suits from 1951. \nAwards received by Blass include a 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and a 2000 NY Designer Walk of Fame Award. \nFollowing the showing of his Spring 2000 collection, Blass retired. It could be said there is no doubt his faithful and fashionable followers will wear with pride there Blass pieces for many years to come.
