Scott Barrie

Neal Clyde Barr — known to the world as Scott Barrie — was born in 1941 in Apalachicola, Florida, and came of age at the elbow of the women who taught him his craft. His West Indian grandmother was a professional dressmaker who set him at the sewing machine as a boy, and a godmother who dressed jazz singers of the day showed him that cloth could carry glamour and grace. From those hands he inherited both skill and ambition.

He studied at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art and the Mayer School of Fashion in New York, then apprenticed with the pioneering designer Arthur McGee and sketched for Vogue Patterns. In 1969 he launched Barrie Sport, Ltd. with partner Stephen Marks, and by December 1972 he held his own showroom on Seventh Avenue, championed early by model Naomi Sims and by the boutiques Henri Bendel and Bloomingdale's.

Barrie became a defining voice of the American matte-jersey tradition. Through inventive draping he made supple, flowing dresses and pants that moved with the body — sensuous, modern eveningwear that helped herald the fashions of the 1970s. He stood among the first Black designers to make a lasting mark on American fashion, in company with Willi Smith, Stephen Burrows, and others of Seventh Avenue.

In his later years he carried his craft abroad, working five years with Milan's Krizia and then with the Japanese house Kinshido. He died in 1993, at fifty-two, in Alessandria, Italy. We honor Scott Barrie, who draped dignity and joy into every line, and whose art opened a door that has never since closed.