Mary McFadden

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Mary Josephine McFadden[1] (born October 1, 1938, New York City) is an American fashion designer and writer.

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[edit] Family

McFadden is the only daughter of Alexander Bloomfield McFadden, a cotton broker, and her mother was the former Mary Josephine Cutting, a socialite and concert pianist. Her father died in 1948, when he was killed in an avalanche while climbing in the Rocky Mountains. She is a descendant of Robert Fulton, the steamboat pioneer.

She has two brothers, George, who died in April of 2008 after a plane he was on crashed into Toledo Bend Reservoir,Texas, and John McFadden, and two half-brothers, Watson B. and Wolcott R. Blair.

McFadden's stepfather is the investment banker Watson K. Blair.

[edit] Education

After graduating from Greenvale and Foxcroft, McFadden studied at the École Lubec, 1955-56 and at the Sorbonne, 1956-57. She also studied fashion at the Traphagen School of Design in 1956 and sociology at Columbia University and at the New School for Social Research, New York, 1958-60. She also attended the Dante Alighieri Institute in Rome.

[edit] Career

Her career included stints with Christian Dior (where she was the company's New York publicity director) and Vogue South Africa (special projects editor) before launching her first collection in New York in 1973. McFadden won a Coty Award in 1976 and entered the Coty Hall of Fame in 1979. Since then she has received many honors including the President's Fellows Award of the Rhode Island School of Design and has served as President of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. McFadden's collections have been shown on runways in New York, Paris, Rome, Milan, and Tokyo.[2]

[edit] Personal life

McFadden has been married to:

  • Philip Victor Harari, a former British Army officer and a company director of De Beers, the South African diamond company. They married on 25 September 1964, at St. Bartholomew's Protestant Episcopal Church in New York City, and McFadden's attendants included Warhol star Baby Jane Holzer (divorced);[3] The couple had one child, Justine, a photographer and film editor.
  • Francis Jack McEwen, OBE, the director of Rhodesia's National Gallery of Art, married January 1969 in Salisbury, Rhodesia (divorced, 1970)
  • Armin Schmidt, married 1981 (divorced)
  • Kohle Yohannan, married 1989 (born 1967, divorced 1992)

In 2007, McFadden's engagement to investment banker Marquette de Bary, (born 1918) was revealed by several newspapers.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Charlotte Curtis, "Mary McFadden Married to Philip Harari at St. Bartholomew's; Former Dior Aide is Wed to Director in De Beers Group", The New York Times, 26 September 1964
  2. ^ The Creative Eye
  3. ^ Charlotte Curtis, "Mary McFadden Married to Philip Harari at St. Bartholomew's; Former Dior Aide is Wed to Director in De Beers Group", The New York Times, 26 September 1964