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Fred Segal, whose clothes boutiques grew to become an emblem of Los Angeles cool by promoting form-fitting denims and chambray shirts to the likes of Bob Dylan, Farah Fawcett and the Beatles, died on Thursday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87.
The trigger was issues of a stroke, a spokeswoman for his household mentioned.
Mr. Segal grew to become one of many West Coast’s best-known designers and retailers within the 1960s as he helped form the picture of Southern California vogue as breezy, horny and relaxed. His namesake ivy-covered retailer grew to become a hangout for fashionistas, Hollywood actors and big-name artists and musicians. For vacationers, it usually figured into sightseeing itineraries proper alongside Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the Hollywood signal.
Mr. Segal opened his first retailer in 1960. It was, in response to the corporate’s website, a 700-square-foot area on Santa Monica Boulevard that offered denim denims, chambray shirts and pants, velvets and flannels.
In 1961, Mr. Segal and his nephew Ron Herman opened a store half as giant on Melrose Avenue that carried solely denims, which they offered for $19.95 a pair (about $175 in in the present day’s cash), a value that was virtually unheard-of at the time, when males nonetheless wore fits and denim pants sometimes offered for $3 a pair.
“My concept was that people wanted to be comfortable, casual and sexy, so I thought it would work, and obviously it did work,” Mr. Segal mentioned in an interview with Haute Living magazine in 2012.
People flocked to the shop to purchase the denims, pushed in no small half by celebrities like Jay Sebring, the hairdresser who was one of many inspirations for Warren Beatty’s character in “Shampoo,” who wore tight, flare-bottomed denims and a fitted shirt that he had bought at Mr. Segal’s retailer. Mr. Segal’s clients quickly included the Beatles, Elvis Presley and Diana Ross, in addition to members of the Jackson Five and Jefferson Airplane.
“When I first came to L.A. in the late ’70s, there were two things everyone talked about: Gucci bags and Fred Segal,” the author Pleasant Gehman informed The New York Times in 2001.
His designs had been notable for suits that had been uncommon for the time. Pants had been minimize for males in order that they might fall low on the hips, for example; his shops additionally offered tightfitting French T-shirts and Danskin leotards.
In addition to his designs, Mr. Segal was amongst a small group of shops at the time — the others included Tommy Perse, Linda Dresner and Joan Weinstein — who pioneered the idea of working intently with designers and promoting the designers’ garments of their shops.
“They had an exquisite eye,” mentioned Ikram Goldman, the proprietor of the Chicago boutique Ikram. “Those are the people that discovered talent and brought it to light in a way that — before Instagram, before social media, before the news hit you — introduced collections that you hadn’t seen before.”
In 2006, The New York Times described Mr. Segal because the clothes shop of “Hollywood fantasies, selling uniforms of expensive shirts and impossibly overthought bluejeans and kitten heels to the city’s well-to-do inhabitants and celebrities.”
Frederick Mandel Segal was born on Aug. 16, 1933, in Chicago. His mother and father, David and Helen Segal, labored a number of jobs, in response to the household’s spokeswoman, and Mr. Segal grew up poor.
He by no means went to high school for vogue and relatively labored as a touring shoe salesman and shined footwear in Venice Beach — two jobs that allow him observe folks and helped him domesticate a way for what patrons needed.
Tired of touring, he determined to open his first retailer in 1960.
Mr. Segal credited his early success to his means to be trustworthy with clients.
“I learned at a very young age that the area of no competition is in integrity,” Mr. Segal informed Haute Living. “When I was selling in my store to my customers and they came in wanting to buy this or that, if they put an outfit on and they asked me for my advice, part of the time I’d say, ‘Take that off, don’t even buy that, that would be ridiculous, you don’t even look good in that.’ That’s really deep honesty. You don’t find that in business, you know?”
There had been finally Fred Segal shops in Taiwan and in Bern, the capital of Switzerland. In 2015, the model opened a store in Tokyo that additionally included an on-site food truck that offered Mexican road corn, shrimp on a roll, and sizzling canines paired with Coca-Cola and Corona.
The title Fred Segal grew to become so well-known that it was casually referenced in films like “Clueless” and “Legally Blonde.”
Mr. Segal is survived by his spouse, Tina; 5 kids, Michael, Judy, Sharon, Nina and Annie; 10 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Mike Ives contributed reporting, and Jack Begg contributed analysis.
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