James Galanos, a fashion designer who spent decades dressing America’s social elite, died on Sunday at his home in West Hollywood, California. He was 92.
James Galanos was born September 20, 1924 in a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the only son of Greek-born parents. His mother, Helen Gorgoliatos, and his father, Gregory Galanos, a frustrated artist, ran a restaurant in southern New Jersey, where Galanos had his first glimpses of well-dressed women.
He grew up a shy boy and learned to work hard from early age. Galanos recalled that he was “a loner, surrounded by three sisters. I never sewed; I just sketched. It was simply instinctive. As a young boy I had no fashion influences around me but all the while I was dreaming of Paris and New York.”
During his long career, Mr. Galanos earned the most accolades his industry had to offer, including several Coty Awards (he was the youngest designer to win one, in 1954), a lifetime achievement award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America and a bronze plaque on Seventh Avenue’s Fashion Walk of Fame. He dressed the famous and the socially prominent — the ladies who lunched, from Park Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue — and outfitted Mrs. Reagan on four inaugural occasions, twice after Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California and twice after he became president.
“Ronnie liked Jimmy’s clothes very much,” Mrs. Reagan said in a 2007 interview with Vanity Fair magazine. “Wearing Jimmy meant never going overboard or to extremes. Jimmy really set the standard.” On another occasion, she remarked of a Galanos dress that “you can wear one inside out, they are so beautifully made.”
Mr. Galanos was in many ways as renowned for what he declined as what he embraced. More than any other American designer, he embodied the concept that elegance is refusal.
“I’m only interested in designing for a certain type of woman,” Mr. Galanos once said. “Specifically, one that has money.”
He evaded celebrity, never sought a broad clientele and actively shunned the fashion establishment and its press. He did not stage fashion shows. He contented himself with providing precisely executed, chaste and ingeniously cut clothing to a small and unswervingly devoted group from what was once termed “the luxury niche.” (more on New York Times)
More on James Galanos career here
RIP Dimitri Galanos