An Homage to Geoffrey Beene

The late, great fashion designer Geoffrey Beene will be immortalized in a brand new Assouline book, Geoffrey Beene, An American Fashion Rebel, out October 13. PAPER mag editor Kim Hastreiter is the scribe on the tome, which, as fashion heavyweight Diane Pernet puts it, focuses “on the fiercely independent, radical, subversive designer who was equally loved by the ladies that lunch as the underground scenesters” (and was at odds with Women’s Wear Daily until his death in 1994).

The Louisiana-born, Tulane-educated designer got his start working at the likes of Harmay and Teal Traina in New York and Paris. In 1963, he launched his namesake house, which would end up dressing such sartorial luminaries as Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Nancy Reagan, Faye Dunaway, and Glenn Close. “Mr. Beene ws American fashion’s most paradoxical designer: a technician who stood shoulder to shoulder with the great French couturiers; a modernist who consistently defied those technical conventions,” Beene’s obituary in the New York Times reads. The book is sure to be a collector’s item for the fashion set, and (considering it comes accompanied by a DVD of interviews with Beene) perhaps an especially novel gift this holiday season.