Geoffrey Beene is the ultimate in paradoxes.
He’s Louisiana’s native son, hailing from a sleepy state that’s obsessed with the past-while creating clothes that take their cues from the future.
The result: Floor-length football jerseys that shimmer and shine with sequins. Generously proportioned ballgowns so light that even a ballerina can perform a tour jete in them. Boleros whipped out of bunched-up lace. Gingham paired with satin. Tweed matched with lace.
Wear a Beene and you’re wearing exquisitely crafted, intricately constructed couture fashioned from
opulent fabrics that the man dreams up himself. Wear a Beene and you’re also wearing an exquisitely expensive creation.
And yet, his credo is “beauty and the least.”
He’s a former medical school student-and the American fashion world’s premier artist.
But don’t tell him that.
“I don’t think of myself as an artist,” says Beene, whose work Marshall Field’s will honor in a retrospective fashion show Friday at the Field Museum. “That would have to be decided by other people at a much later time. I try to design modern clothes for a quickly paced society. I’m trying to anticipate their needs and be one step ahead of them.”
Meanwhile, others are trying to keep up: In addition to the Field’s event, a new book, “Geoffrey Beene” (Henry N. Abrams), celebrates the man behind the 30-year-plus-wundercareer.
