The Fashion Figures We Lost in 2022

Katie Gallager, Fashion Designer, 35

Katie Gallagher, a black-clad blonde from Pennsylvania with a talent for pattern-making, was being buzzed about even before she graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and moved to New York. The central dichotomy in her work was the balance between what she called the “cute with the hard.” Gallagher was early to bring activewear into fashion and was known for adding a sexy spin to performance-type designs, and had a penchant for bows. “Katie,” said fellow designer and friend Maayan Zilberman, “was not concerned with trends, commerce, or seemingly, critique. It was most important to her for her fantasy to live in a reality of her making.”
Read more about Katie Gallagher.

Ron Galella, Paparazzi Photographer, 91

“I’m really the super fan, but with me it’s a business.” That was Ron Galella whose paparazzi shots of the rich and famous helped define celebrity culture as we know it today. Born in New York, the son of Italian immigrants, Galella trained as a photographer while serving with the US Air Force during the Korean War, and later got a degree in photojournalism in California. Back home in New York, Galella took his camera out on the town, where he captured the beautiful people—including his obsession, Jaqueline Kennedy—in their unguarded moments by any means necessary.
Read more about Ron Gallela.

Pamela Rooke, aka Jordan, Punk Icon, 66

A character of her own creation, the self-named Jordan was born in Sussex and kicked out of school for her adventurous sense of style. London was her mecca, and a after a brief stint at Harrod’s she joined Vivienne Westwood and Malcom McLaren’s extended family, working in and becoming the face of their shop Sex. Jordan was drawn into the orbit of McClaren’s bands, the Sex Pistols and Adam and the Ants as well, and along the way became a star in her own right, with appearances in two of Derek Jarman’s films. “She also made an appearance in the highly controversial first airing of the Sex Pistols’ ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’ on British national television,” wrote Liam Hess, “standing at the front of the crowd in a T-shirt that read ‘only anarchists are pretty.’”
Read more about Pamela Rooke.

Patrick Demarchelier, Fashion and Portrait Photographer, 78

A self-taught photographer born in Le Havre, France, Patrick Demarchelier, balanced elegance and natural ease in his work. He worked closely with Grace Coddington at British and American Vogue, and in 1989 he became the personal portraitist of Diana, Princess of Wales. He was the recipient of many awards, including those from the French Ministry of Culture and the CFDA. Despite a rich and deep legacy, in 2018 amidst the #MeToo reckoning, Demarchelier was among a number of photographers accused of sexual harassment. Demarchelier denied the allegations. “Photographers have to make the clothes look fantastic, that’s why we get paid,” he said in a 2012 interview, “and I have positive eyes.”
Read more about Patrick Demarchelier.

Susanne Schöneborn, Vogue Cover Model, 79

An eight-time Vogue cover model and one of the Charlie fragrance faces, the smiling, crop-haired Susanne Schöneborn was the embodiment of the liberated woman of the 1970s. “Anyone who even had just a passing interaction with her was impacted by her kind and youthful spirit,” said her daughter Alexandra Menna. Schöneborn was born in West Berlin and moved to Paris to model before landing in New York.
Read more about Susanne Schöneborn.

Pablo Manzoni, Makeup Artist, 82

“The great Pablo is now here,” announced Vogue in the May 1964 issue, featuring the makeup artist’s handiwork on the cover. Born into an aristocratic Italian family, through contacts the inexperienced Manzoni got a job at Elizabeth Arden in Rome, where he soon made a name for himself, bleaching Sophia Loren’s eyebrows and working with other notables. He also collaborated with designers, creating fantastical maquillage to enhance their work and play-up the fantasy element. In 1965, a year after joining Elizabeth Arden in New York, he received a Coty Award, the first in the field. “Elizabeth Arden’s Pablo has done for makeup and the makeup man what Kenneth did for hair and the hairdresser, he has lifted cosmetics from an accessory executed by who knows to an important component of fashion executed by a star,” wrote Priscilla Tucker, a Herald Tribune News Service writer in 1965.
Read more about Pablo Manzoni.

André Leon Talley, Vogue Editor, 73

“A fashion oracle and an entirely original man,” is Hamish Bowles’s apt description of André Leon Talley, Vogue editor extraordinaire. Born in Washington, D.C. and raised by his grandmother in Durham, North Carolina, Talley studied French literature at Brown University after which he came to New York and apprenticed with Diana Vreeland at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. This was followed by stints at Andy Warhol’s Interview, Women’s Wear Daily, and the New York Times. He started as the fashion news director at Vogue in 1983; five years later he was named creative director, the first Black man to hold the position. “He was like the Black Rockette… he was the one,” said Whoopi Goldberg, in the 2018 biopic The Gospel According to André. In fact, Talley had the energy and enthusiasm of the whole chorus line. “Time with André was gala time; he didn’t do banal,” wrote Bowles. “And he pushed and fought for diversity at every turn.”
Read more about André Leon Talley.
Read Anna Wintour’s rememberance.
Read Hamish Bowles’s rememberance.
See André Leon Talley’s life in pictures.

Manfred Thierry Mugler, Fashion and Costume Designer, 73

One of fashion’s great showmen, Manfred Thierry Mugler’s work projected strength and fantasy. His “type” was a cross-species femme fatale; he presented women as robots, motorcycles, and even clams, but he could also see them as goddesses and angels. Beyonce, Cardi B, and Kim Kardashian are recent fans of Mugler’s archival work. Born in Strasbourg, Mugler was trained as a dancer for the opera. He moved to Paris in 1966 and seven years later established his own maison. Success built upon success. Angel, the house’s best-selling fragrance, was launched in 1992, the same year Mugler directed George Michael’s “Too Funky” video. Ten years later he left fashion and soon was working with the Cirque du Soleil, bringing his magic into another realm.
Read more about Manfred Thierry Mugler.

Gaspard Ulliel, 37, Actor

World News Today once dubbed Gaspard Ulliel “a child of fashion,” which he was literally and figuratively. Born just outside of Paris, the actor was the son of a fashion designer father and a stylist mother. Long before Ulliel played Yves Saint Laurent in the 2014 film, or became the face of a Chanel fragrance, he walked in Hedi Slimane’s fall 2003 show, but of course, his heart belonged to the screen. Ulliel who segued from television to film, was the recipient of two César Awards.
Revisit some of the actor’s memorable performances.

Peter Hidalgo, Fashion Designer, 53

Born in the Dominican Republic, Peter Hidalgo first came into contact with New York City’s downtown club and fashion scenes through Antonio Lopez. The illustrator selected Hidalgo for a special course in an arts school. Gifted with a paintbrush himself, Hidalgo often made himself up for his late night vogueing performances. Hidalgo worked side-by-side with the renegade designer Miguel Adrover for many years. He later struck out on his own, creating structured and ladylike looks, and was a co-winner of the Fashion Group International’s Rising Star Award in 2010. More recently he worked, as he had at the start of his career, with private clients.

Nino Cerruti, Fashion Designer, Textile Scion, 91

“Style is balance, but with a dramatic twist,” said Nino Cerrutti in an interview with Vogue Italia published in 2021, some 71 years after the Italian dynamo inherited the textile business founded by his grandfather in 1881. His debut line, Hitman, presented in 1957, was recognized as groundbreaking. “He was the first to deconstruct the formal suit and bring genderless garments to the masses,” wrote Fabiana Giacomotti. “He detests everything that clings to the body, that constrains it, that fails to indulge its capacity for movement and expression of thoughts.” (Giorgio Armani, who spent six years at Cerruti’s side, would take these innovations as his starting point.) Indeed, Cerruti’s focus was always on physicality as an extension of fabric, his obsession, and he brought the expressiveness of his materials and silhouettes to everyday wardrobes of men and women, as well as to the silver screen, making costumes for The Jewel of the Nile (1985) and The Proprietor (1996)—as well as a few cameos.
Read Fabiana Giacomotti’s rememberance.

Dorothy McGowan, Vogue Cover Model Who Played “Polly Maggoo,” 82

The daughter of Irish immigrants, Dorothy McGowan graced the cover of Vogue 13 times between 1960 and 1962. Dark-haired with a fair complexion and a bit of wide-eyed gaze à la Clara Bow or Betty Boop, she said of herself, “I was a simple kid from Brooklyn, not a great beauty. I had a certain grace, because I was trained to be a dancer, but I was too tall. So I answered an ad in The New York Times that said, ‘Trainee in fashion wanted.’ A photographer said, ‘I don’t know, but this girl has something. There’s something about this girl.’ Within six months I was working with Irving Penn.” So iconic was she, William Klein cast her in the role of charming American in Paris in Qui Êtes-Vous Polly Maggoo?