It isn't as if I knew Bill Blass well. I didn't. I talked with him often during the years I covered the fashion industry. That doesn't mean you know someone. But what I did know, or observed, I liked. Maybe respected is the better word.
He was always gracious. You knew he traveled with the movers and shakers of high society, and many of them were his customers. He allowed me backstage at the Pierre Hotel, where he staged his three shows in a single day, to share behind-the-scenes activity with my readers, in 1982 and again in 1991.
I can still see him pacing, wondering whether the 150 pairs of shoes from Italy had arrived, adjusting a collar on model Iman's jacket. And smoking.
He was quiet, which everyone knew meant he was nervous. A model due on the Concorde from Paris had not arrived. She did eventually. The show went on.
"Every show is like the first one," he said.
The word "charisma" is used often when Bill Blass is mentioned. He lived the ultimate good life. He deserved it.
What I learned to recognize in the 35 years I observed him was that he was possibly the best representative of the American fashion industry, not only as a talent but as a gentleman.
His death June 12 means we lost an original, but he left us a pattern we can all afford to copy: Class and style, in that order.
I am told his will requested no funeral or memorial service. I can't imagine him fading from our memories, just like that. He might have requested it, but I can't honor it, because I have memories I want to share today. I should add, as planned.
The past few weeks, before his death, I had been attempting to get a story together about Bill Blass, primarily because yesterday he would have turned 80.
I wanted to celebrate that fact today, and I had sent him a list of questions I had hoped he would answer.
I have no doubt he would have, had he not been so ill.
Through his friend and former business associate, Tom Fallon, a former Pittsburgher, I learned that a telephone interview wouldn't be possible. Blass was having problems with his voice, and there were good and bad days. Fallon said he would submit my questions to him and try to get answers for me.
I later learned Fallon was forbidden to tell me Blass had had a recurrence of throat and tongue cancer. Although I sensed that was the case, I didn't know how bad it was. Fallon and other friends who knew the cancer was terminal had felt that Blass had at least another month to live.
He would turn 80. But as Fallon remarked after his passing, "The guy was a charmer. He died with style, surrounded by his beautiful things at the country home he loved.
"Slyly, Willie had no intention of turning 80. He'd forever be 79."
For years, Blass was seldom seen without a cigarette. He quit many times. But between his fingers or in his mouth, even while talking, it became a trademark almost as familiar as the back-to-back B's that became his logo.
One of the questions I had submitted to him haunts me.
"Do you still smoke? Are you sorry you ever did?"
And another: "What do you plan to do on your birthday?"
Pittsburgh figured in his frantic schedules many times over the years. He came here five times -- more than any other designer -- to be saluted at the Symphony Gala, including the final Gala in 1989. Other years were 1967, 1971, 1977 and 1981.
He visited Kaufmann's as well, as he explored the country and gathered his fans beyond celebrities such as Barbara Walters, former first lady Nancy Reagan and Estee Lauder. At a cocktail party at the Pittsburgh Golf Club, he charmed the store president, David Farrell, who would go on to head parent May Co.
In 1977, he was a guest for the opening of the Saks Fifth Avenue at 513 Smithfield St.
Many Pittsburghers knew him and appreciated him.
Jane Vandermade, who was fashion director and vice president at Horne's, which presented the fashion Galas for the benefit of the Pittsburgh Symphony for 25 years, was a friend.
"What should be remembered is he was a designer who understood that fashion wasn't just New York and Los Angeles, but there were women everywhere who wanted to be exposed to couture. He went to other cities, such as Pittsburgh, and talked to customers. More important, he listened. He learned what they needed and what they wanted."
He brought beauty to the world for many years, and we sure can use some of that right about now.
Class, in everything, seems to have taken a holiday.
His collections -- even when they weren't stellar, which was seldom -- took our breath away. Even if we couldn't afford them, we could be moved by his presentations, aimed directly at American women's lifestyles. Or at least to their dreams.
Vandermade recalls that Blass came to Pittsburgh for a river cruise when Bill Blass jeans were launched at the store. Known for couture, or high fashion, which most people couldn't afford, he put his stamp on licensed products, as well as Blassport, his own less expensive line.
Everyone wanted to own a Blass, at any price. It extended to Godiva chocolates -- he had his name on a special box in the '80s. We hungered for anything with his name on it because we trusted it would be the best.
Fallon tells a story even Lincoln Continental executives might not know. Some years ago, Blass was asked to design a car for them, which he did. It was the ultimate in luxury and was highly publicized. What they didn't know was Blass never learned how to drive.
Arnold Zegarelli and his Horne's salon staff would do the hair and makeup for models in the Gala shows.
"He was the nicest of all the designers who came here to be honored all those years," says the stylist at Premier Salon. "He always went out of his way to come to us and thank us for making his clothes look good. Can you imagine? That's class. He had it."
He designed his first menswear collection in 1967, the same year he came to Pittsburgh in the fall for his first Symphony salute at Carnegie Hall.
"After the first one, he trusted me," said Vandermade, who staged the extravagant shows that later would move to Heinz Hall.
"Whenever I invited him to come again, especially for the final show in 1989, he would change his schedule for us."
This might not be in the biography Blass recently completed with Cathy Horyn of The New York Times, due out in October, but Blass loved Clark bars.
"He didn't even know they were made in Pittsburgh until he saw the sign on the hillside as we drove in from the airport," says Vandermade. "After that, I often sent a box of Clark bars for his birthday."
If he loved candy bars, he loved his dogs even more. In 1982, he had Golden retrievers with the unlikely names of Kate and Brutus, and others, including Labs, since then.
Being with them in the country house in New Preston, Conn., where he died, was his greatest joy. Oscar de la Renta was a country neighbor.
There was life beyond Seventh Avenue, which most of us thought of as the designer's element. Blass opened his penthouse, where he lived before moving to Sutton Place South, to the press during fashion weeks. The Indiana boy who formed Bill Blass Ltd. in 1970 lived well. I remember the terrace that wrapped around his apartment and the view of Central Park. This, I thought, was like a movie. And I was in it.
Five years ago, I had my last conversation with him as he once again granted me entry into his museum-like Manhattan dwelling. I sensed he was wondering whether it was time to exit the fashion world.
He was a bit melancholy. "I love New York and think it is the most exciting place in the world. I love the fantastic energy. But I am conscious of homeless people on the street, and small courtesies are rare. The city is dirty. I know the way I talk is a sign of age." He was 74.
"It's not the same." He sighed. "I'm not the same."
In the country, he said, he would be awakened by the one dog who slept with him, and they would go for a walk as early as 6 a.m. He would retire early. He liked this life, so distinctly different from the party rush in the city.
Within the next two years, he would sell his $700-million-a-year company with its 40 licenses.
He would, of course, still live stylishly.
The house in the country, where he described "a fairly quiet existence," was filled with his taste and collector items. He took to retirement easily, if not for a long enough time.
That is where this gentleman quietly left us, in style, his white Lab, Barnaby, at his side. He could do it no other way.
He was always as classy as the clothes he designed.
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