Oscar de la Renta

“The Sultan of Suave,” “Couture Conquistador,” and “Guru of Glamour” are but three of the complimentary monikers Oscar de la Renta answered to in the course of his long and starry career. It began in Spain, chez Cristóbal Balenciaga; traversed Paris (where he worked at Lanvin); and landed him—with an armful of letters of introduction—in New York City in 1963. There, he was heralded as “a comet on the American style scene,” because he moved about “in swift and remarkably high circles for so young a man.”

De la Renta was noted for his knack for combining old-world craftsmanship with modernity. There was a distinctive Latin flair to his embellishments. Although he clearly had a taste for traditional costume and the folkloric—European peasant embroidery appeared in his collections with frequency—everything he did had an elevated air of polish, panache, and propriety. And the appeal of his clothes was such that they crossed continents and the political aisle: De la Renta dressed two consecutive First Ladies, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, on their second Inauguration Days.

“Having invented his ideal life, Oscar de la Renta now delights in sharing it,” Georgina Howell noted in Vogue in 1989. Volunteerism and nonprofit work were part of his everyday routine. In 1982 he cofounded La Casa del Niño, a refuge for needy Dominican children; he helped build a school near his home in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic; and he was a board member of the Metropolitan Opera Guild and New Yorkers for Children, as well as a two-time president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. He knew his way around the dance floor and a stack of dominoes—and was welcomed affectionately into the drawing rooms of upper-crust beauties (and brides) from Buenos Aires to Boston. Most just called him Oscar.

De la Renta died in 2014 after a long battle with cancer. He handpicked his successor, the British designer Peter Copping, but the arrangement didn’t last long. Copping left the company in 2016.