Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients YearĪll net profits from Geoffrey Beene products are donated to philanthropic causes, such as cancer research, Alzheimer's research, domestic violence prevention and response, Save the Children, and educational programs, including scholarships for students majoring in fashion and related disciplines. In honor of Beene's fashion legacy, the Council of Fashion Designers of America created the annual Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement award in 1984. Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award His career in fashion design spanned over 40 years. Several of his former apprentices, Kay Unger, Alber Elbaz and Maria Pinto are now successful fashion designers.īeene died on September 28, 2004, due to complications ( pneumonia) from cancer at age 80. Beene was known as both an innovator and a teacher. In 1989, he opened the first Geoffrey Beene retail boutique on Fifth Avenue.īeene's clients included Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Nancy Reagan, Faye Dunaway and Glenn Close. Two years later, the Council of Fashion Designers of America awarded Beene the Special Award for Fashion as Art. In 1986, Beene was named The Council of Fashion Designers of America's Designer of the Year. In 1982, Beene received his eighth Coty Award the most awarded to any one designer. This success led to his sixth Coty Award in 1977, for giving impetus to American fashion abroad. In 1976, Beene became the first American designer to show a collection in Milan, Italy. It contains notes of orange, lemon, rose, geranium, sandalwood and cedar wood, and is considered a classic men's fragrance winning a FIFI Award in 1976. By the mid-1970s, Beene had a number of licensing agreements for products such as eyeglasses and bed sheets, and also his most famously known cologne called Grey Flannel, launched in 1975. Introduced in 1971, the Beene Bag line of women’s wear used the same silhouettes as his couture line. In his 1970 collection, Beene applied the use of inexpensive fabrics such as sweatshirt and denim fabric for evening dresses. His first collection was featured on the cover of Vogue Magazine. Lamé velvet "Mercury" evening dress by Beene, Fall-Winter 1994-5 ( PMA) īeene founded his firm, Geoffrey Beene, Inc., in New York City in 1963, in partnership with Teal Traina's Leo Orlandi in a Seventh Avenue showroom.Ī year later, he was awarded the Coty American Fashion Critics' Award, one of the most prestigious awards in fashion. In 1958, he left Harmay to design with Teal Traina, before founding his eponymous design house.
In 1949, he returned to New York, where he became Assistant Designer at the Seventh Avenue house of Harmay. He then moved to Paris, where he attended the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne (ECSCP) and the couture house of Molyneux. Later that year, he moved to New York City to attend the Traphagen School of Fashion. Beene moved to Los Angeles, where he studied fashion design at the University of Southern California and worked in the display department of the I. He studied medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans but dropped out in 1946, after three years of study. He was born into a family of doctors and was encouraged to follow in their footsteps.
4 Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Awardīeene was born on August 30, 1924, in the small rural town of Haynesville, Louisiana, located just south of the Arkansas state line.