Showing posts with label obituaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obituaries. Show all posts

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Alexander McQueen (1969-2010)

Lee Alexander McQueen
( March 16, 1969 - February 11, 2010)
RIP

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Irving Penn, Iconic Fashion Photographer, 92


(Photo: Irving Penn/ tfs: Gold Star)

From The New York Times:
Irving Penn, Fashion Photographer, Is Dead at 92
By ANDY GRUNDBERG

Irving Penn, one of the 20th century’s most prolific and influential photographers of fashion and the famous, whose signature blend of classical elegance and cool minimalism was recognizable to magazine readers and museumgoers worldwide, died Wednesday morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.


His death was announced by Peter MacGill, his friend and representative.


Mr. Penn’s talent for picturing his subjects with compositional clarity and economy earned him the widespread admiration of readers of Vogue during his long association with the magazine, beginning in 1943. It also brought him recognition in the art world; his photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries and are prized by collectors.


His long career at Vogue spanned a number of radical transformations in fashion and its depiction, but his style remained remarkably constant. Imbued with calm and decorum, his photographs often seemed intent on defying fashion. His models and portrait subjects were never seen leaping or running or turning themselves into blurs. Even the rough-and-ready members of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, photographed in San Francisco in 1967, were transformed within the quieting frame of his studio camera into the graphic equivalent of a Greek frieze.


Instead of spontaneity, Mr. Penn provided the illusion of a seance, his gaze precisely describing the profile of a Balenciaga coat or of a Moroccan jalaba in a way that could almost mesmerize the viewer. Nothing escaped the edges of his photographs unless he commanded it. Except for a series of close-up portraits that cut his subjects’ heads off at the forehead, and another, stranger suite of overripe nudes, his subjects were usually shown whole, apparently enjoying a splendid isolation from the real world.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Obit: Donald Fisher, 81. Gap Co-Founder

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Donald Fisher, who co-founded Gap Inc (GPS.N) with his wife Doris forty years ago, died on Sunday after a battle with cancer, the clothing retailer said.
He was 81.

The company that the Fishers began as a little denim store in San Francisco now operates more than 3,100 stores in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Japan and Ireland, and it has been credited with inventing the specialty retail category.

The Fishers opened their first store in San Francisco in 1969, and named it The Gap in reference to the generational differences between baby boomers and their parents.

When it first opened, the Gap mainly sold Levi's jeans, tapes and records, and it flourished in 1970s as consumers snapped up its denim.

Read the full story at Reuters