Clothes Out

The world of fashion lost two eponymous figures in the last week as designer Geoffrey Beene died of pneumonia in his Manhattan home at 77 and E.R. Haggar, who turned a family clothing store into a national brand of slacks and shirts, died at 88. Beene failed at medical school, but those who can’t sew, stitch, and he combined style and comfort to find a place in American fashion, and was the first American designer to show his clothes in Milan. In 1967 he pulled off the difficult one-two punch of melding a sequined evening dress with a football jersey and designing a wedding dress that made first daughter Lynda Bird Johnson look good. Haggar was credited with coining the word “slacks” and for developing wrinkle-free clothes for lazy men who don’t like to iron things.