Mary McFadden

Mary McFadden (October 1, 1938 – September 13, 2024) was an American fashion designer of women's clothing and other high-fashion items, including historically inspired form-fitting dresses.

Early life and education McFadden was born on October 1, 1938, in Manhattan, New York, and spent the early part of her childhood on a cotton plantation outside Memphis, Tennessee. When she was nine, her father died in an avalanche while he was skiing in Aspen, Colorado. She went on to attend Columbia University, the Ecole Lubec, the New School for Social Research, the Sorbonne, and the Traphagen School of Fashion (1956, Costume Design).

Career Between 1962 and 1964, McFadden worked as public relations director at Christian Dior in New York and Paris. Since she knew nothing about publicity, she made an agreement that she would be paid in the form of 50 dresses per year from Dior-New York and Dior-Paris instead of money. She then married Philip Harari, a merchant for De Beers. She relocated to South Africa in the same year and Diana Vreeland arranged for her to become an editor for Vogue South Africa. She was in this position until 1966 when the magazine was closed. She then worked for The Rand Daily Mail as a travel and political columnist. The company was noted for the McFadden-designed pleated dresses, which draped "like liquid gold" down a woman's body similar to those on the caryatids at the Acropolis. The dresses were similar to the earlier work of Henriette Negrin and Mariano Fortuny. The dresses were made from Marii, a synthetic charmeuse patented by McFadden in 1975 that was made in Australia, dyed in Japan, and then machine-pressed in the United States. The dresses were popular with socialites including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The company closed in 2002.

In 2012, McFadden and her companion Murray Gell-Mann published the book Mary McFadden: A Lifetime of Design, Collecting, and Adventure.

Personal life McFadden claimed to be married at least eleven times, but declared that some of these marriages were "only spiritual". museum director Armin Schmidt (later divorced)

Awards Coty Award, 1976 Coty Award, 1978 Coty Hall of Fame induction, 1979 American Printed Fabrics Council Tommy Award, 1984 Council of Fashion Designers of America Lifetime Achievement Award, 1988 United Nations Women Together Award, 2013 Named on the Eleanor Lambert Vanity Fair Best Dressed List Named the first "Living Landmark" from the New York Landmarks Conservancy President's Fellow Award of the Rhode Island School of Design