The quintessential outsider in an exclusive world, fashion designer Geoffrey Beene (1924–2004) paved a singular path, doing things his own way rather than follow the pack. Born Samuel Albert Bozeman Jr. in a small country town in Louisiana, Geoffrey Beene was a Southern gentleman drawn to simplicity, contradiction and refinement that became the hallmark of his work.
Blending classical and avant garde aesthetics to sculpt garments of exquisite grace and form, “Mr. Beene” as everyone called him, was the consummate couturier who eschewed the trappings of fame, fortune, and status in favor of simply making clothes for a list of legendary clients whose names he long refused to divulge.
But New York magazine felt no such qualms whatsoever. For their splashy 1988 cover story to mark the 25th anniversary of the fashion house, they listed First Ladies Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Nancy Reagan, and Pat Nixon, actresses Faye Dunaway and Glenn Close, fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt, and jewelry designer Paloma Picasso as patrons of the venerable American designer.
That same year, Mr. Beene invited the husband and wife photography team of Constance Hansen and Russell Peacock known as Guzman to photograph his seasonal collections. It was an auspicious collaboration for the young upstarts, who had just begun shooting fashion for The Village Voice.
“We got to do whatever we wanted because it wasn’t a fashion magazine,” Hansen remembers fondly of their time at the downtown newspaper.
Neither she nor Peacock remember exactly how the connection came about. Apparently, Mr. Beene had seen a photograph, tracked them down, and made them an offer they could not refuse.
A Southern Gentleman on Seventh Avenue
Between 1988–1996, Constance Hansen and Russell Peacock would photograph, off and on, collections for Geoffrey Beene at his 550 Seventh Avenue showroom in New York. He stood shoulder to shoulder with the great American designers — Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, and Ralph Lauren — but his name and legacy had all but been erased. “He didn’t want to play the game,” Peacock says.
Unlike his contemporaries, Mr. Beene resisted the majority of licensing deals that landed at his feet. While Halston, Pierre Cardin, and Calvin Klein built their businesses on rubber stamped product lines, he found the experience less than satisfying. After a quarter of a century running a couture house and keeping pace with ready to wear, Mr. Beene balked at his name being used to peddle lesser goods when he readily spent half a million dollars on fabric alone for a single fashion show at the Pierre Hotel.
But that alone was not enough to blot Mr. Beene from view. That was the work of John Fairchild (1927–2015), publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, who banned all mention of the designer from its pages. The feud began in 1967, after Mr. Beene refused to give the paper a scoop on the wedding dress he designed for Lynda Bird Johnson, daughter of then President Lyndon B. Johnson.
They feuded on and off for years, with WWD banned from the shows in return. “The values in our society are just ridiculous,” Mr. Beene said in 1988. “Can you imagine caring that much about a fashion show? It’s just clothes.”
Dare to Drape
With fashion designers expanding their empires through licensing deals, branding became the lingua franca of American consumerism. Gloria Vanderbilt and Calvin Klein introduced designer jeans to the market, their names stamped on backsides, while Ralph Lauren created home goods, turning preppy chic into a lifestyle.
But Geoffrey Beene kept to the old ways, focusing on custom fabrics that could be used to sculpt wearable art. While he had success with Grey Flannel cologne, his other attempts had been lackluster. Rather than charge ahead, he scaled back to couture and Beene Bag, the ready to wear line.
“He didn’t have a big operation, and he didn’t want to grow it. He was really focused on what he wanted to do,” says Constance Hansen. “His studio was like an atelier. It was very formal and we were intrigued by that because it was all very new to us. We were outsiders too and I think he liked that.”
Working with fabrics that cost up to $325 a yard, Mr. Beene dared to drape, hang, sculpt, and shape silhouettes that were as stunning as they were functional. Although they took the form of tweed dinner dresses, quilted boleros, aviator jackets, and monks robes, they were wildly stylish, daringly avant garde, and imbued with the one true American non-negotiable: comfortability.
The hallmark of Geoffrey Beene was contradiction and surprise, a vision Guzman channeled in their large format photographs as much of the moment as they were nearly four decades ago.
“Mr. Beene would oscillate between severe monastic clothes and something with lace, fetish, and seduction in the same collection,” Hansen says. “He would concentrate on a deep plunging back or the side of the hip. He loved playing with form and would always do something unexpected.”
Straight Fax
The Guzman collaboration with Geoffrey Beene continued through the 1990s, as Constance Hansen and Russell Peacock emerged as one of the most innovative photography teams in the industry. From their collaboration with Janet Jackson for the album cover of Rhythm Nation 1814 to their iconic Louis Vuitton advertising collaboration with Grandmaster Flash, Guzman did as they pleased while having a good time.
The collaboration with Geoffrey Beene was organic and intuitive. “We were in our 1930’s Berlin era and he was excited about the coming century, and somehow our two esthetics connected. The common denominator was a dynamic minimalism,” says Peacock.
Inspired by the work of George Platt Lynes, Hansen and Peacock embraced the sculptural elements of the photograph to complement the structural aspects of the clothes. At a time when the supermodel emerged as a commercial force, they understood nothing would please Mr. Beene more than finding models who were quirky, charismatic, and anonymous.
Rather than give overt direction, Mr. Beene made his preferences known. “We did a story for Esquire that had five different models, and we made them look exactly the same. It was five men in white boxer shorts and they were running,” says Peacock. “He flipped out and sent us a fax saying this was his favorite.” Hansen agrees. “What I liked about him is he gave you credit. Mr. Beene was authentic. He was just really into designing clothes.”
