Trend and Product Designer and Artist Mark Eisen Dies at 65 – WWD

Mark Eisen, who was a number one clothier within the ’90s earlier than venturing into artwork, has died at age 65.

Companies have been held final week for Eisen, who died on Nov. 17 at his residence in Nice Barrington, Mass. The household has not disclosed the reason for demise, based on Jared Vorster, a household spokesperson, who additionally labored with Eisen for in regards to the previous 10 years.

After being an influential American designer within the ’80s and ’90s, Eisen exited the style world. He moved again part-time to his homeland South Africa in 2007, the place he purchased and renovated a Seventeenth-century French Huguenot wine farm. Along with making wine, Eisen used that point on the farm to concentrate on industrial design for the luxurious group Compagnie Financière Richemont. Eisen additionally concurrently pursued his artwork as a sculptor.

Born in Cape City, Eisen moved to the U.S. on the age of 19 to attend the College of Southern California, the place he studied enterprise. As an undergraduate, he designed a Trojan-type hat akin to the varsity’s mascot that was offered nationwide, at a time when USC was a number-one athletic collegiate power. The gross sales helped land him a job with an actual property developer, however boredom set in and he turned his consideration extra to trend. In 1988, he was honored with the “Alumni of the 12 months” award from the College of Southern California Enterprise College and the next yr, he was nominated because the “California Designer of the 12 months.”

“Mark was very a lot about that this world wanted extra positivity and light-weight, and thru that you may convey pleasure. Plenty of Mark’s ethos was gratitude, pleasure and light-weight,” Vorster stated. “For him, it was much less about look-world-I’ve-accomplished-this and extra, I get pleasure from doing these items and creating. That might result in no matter it results in, however he was not doing it for recognition.”

Eisen began his firm in 1982 on the West Coast. After deciding on a whim at some point within the mid-’80s to spray paint shade blocks on the denim outfit he was carrying, Eisen was impressed to create a group that wouldn’t fade — a marked distinction from the ocean of acid-washed denims that have been all of the rave at the moment. Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys New York picked up his first “Couture Denim” assortment within the spring of 1988 and quantity reached $1 million in a yr. Realizing closets aren’t crammed solely with denims, he ventured into different fields and disproved naysayers who had dismissed him as a denim designer. Eisen initially ran his enterprise in Venice, Calif., creating what he referred to as “traditional American luxurious womenswear.” After crisscrossing the nation between Los Angeles and New York Metropolis, he moved his headquarters to Manhattan in 1998.

His dexterity as a designer could possibly be seen within the FiFi-award-winning perfume bottles Icon for Alfred Dunhill and Emblem for Montblanc and Worldstar packaging-awarded bottles for Protea from A.Rupert Wines. He as soon as headlined an Absolut vodka commercial with the tag line “Absolut Eisen.” He additionally designed a Harley Davidson attire assortment and created customized appears to be like for The Rolling Stones, The Who’s Pete Townsend and Religion Hill for her closing ceremony efficiency on the Atlanta Summer season Olympic Video games. Eisen additionally was recruited one yr to embellish the White Home Christmas tree, when Invoice and Hillary Clinton resided there.

Together with his broad smile and curtain of lengthy black hair, Eisen conveyed a sure vitality that was synonymous with unbiased younger trend designers. In 1996, the designer added the up to date knitwear label Urchin and Urchin Knits, which was offered to 470 shops within the U.S. It was later renamed Urchin Mark Eisen. Eisen additionally as soon as had a licensed assortment in Japan referred to as Studio Mark Eisen and a diffusion line, George Me, that was offered to Walmart for a time frame. In his prime, the designer had design studios in New York, Italy, Japan and Hong Kong. His collections offered for 18 years in additional than 800 shops in 18 international locations.

Eisen was additionally a presence at New York Trend Week for 12 consecutive seasons within the ’90s. He remained a voting member of the CFDA.

In 2000 Eisen struck up a 50-50 partnership with Sportswear Co. SpA, the Italian agency behind the C.P. Firm and Stone Island labels, to provide and distribute the Mark Eisen Assortment. That very same yr he licensed footwear with Lerre. At the moment, Eisen’s firm was a $20 million entity.

In 2006, Eisen’s life took one other flip when he married his spouse Karen, whom he had met 4 years earlier than. The couple went on to lift two kids, and household life grew to become his main devotion.

Within the mid-2010s, Eisen started mining his private archive with the intention of making sculpture. In his artworks, there are key ideas and varieties that had been developed over almost three many years as a designer. Attuned to the interaction of sunshine and house, his creations have been filled with shade and made with easy geometric areas, together with overlays. (His trend collections had used such surprising materials as laminated chiffon, and resin-coated, sparkly rayon crepe.

His artworks, whose complexity typically required the assistance of artisans to execute, additionally present the place patternmaking, tooling, materials, structure and expertise fuse. A typical day consisted of dreaming and creating. “There are only a few individuals, who we come throughout on the planet, who don’t simply have concepts, however imaginative and prescient to show it right into a actuality,” Vorster stated.

Eisen is survived by his spouse, his two kids Abigail Eloise and Cameron Harry, in addition to his two sisters Merle and Linda.