Geoffrey Beene Little Black Dress ~ 1960s

Early BeeneBag label

1960s & 70s Beene label

He took evening fabrics and made sweatshirt dresses from them.  He took casual fabrics and made evening clothes. He was always looking for ways to stretch a conventional design beyond the expected.

Even his lower priced lines, BeeneBag and Beene Bazaar, show this imaginative use of fabric, and are well worth collecting.  One of his most wearable forms was the lady's shirt and shirt dress, in which he would mix and match similar but different prints.

Detail of BeeneBag shirt

Detail of satin & velvet Beene skirt

Beene was also a master at mixing textures and colors.  Many of his designs were in black and white, or were a mixture of interesting fabrics and textures.  He would make a black garment out of two different fabrics, and the mix of textures gave the right touch of contrast.

Geoffrey Beene was a designer for the modern woman.  Maybe that's why his work looks so great even now, years after the designs were conceived.

I began rethinking the question of clothes and their relation to how people lived, how comfortable they felt, how they fit into the pace of modern living.

Geoffrey Beene, 1976

Detail of leather & linen Beene Skirt