Italian Designer Angelo Litrico Dies at 58

Angelo Litrico, the menswear designer who provided Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev with the shoe he banged at the U.N. General Assembly and tried to bring a vicuna coat to President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the height of the Sherman Adams scandal, died Thursday at the age of 58.

An announcement on Italian television said Litrico died suddenly but did not give the cause of his death.

A Sicilian who arrived in Rome after World War II with only 3,000 lire, then worth less than $5, in his pocket, Litrico became world famous in little more than a decade.

Khrushchev ordered four or five suits a year from Litrico, who gave the Soviet leader a more streamlined Western look by reducing the width of his sleeves and trouser cuffs.

The shoe that Khrushchev banged on the table at the U.N. General Assembly in 1960 also came from Litrico. The designer said he had it specially made in Rome with raised insteps and slightly higher than normal heels to give added stature to the pudgy leader.

Suits for Heads of State

Litrico also cut suits for Presidents Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito and Emperor Hirohito of Japan.

In 1958, as the Eisenhower Administration was reeling from disclosures that Eisenhower’s top aide, Adams, had accepted expensive gifts--including a vicuna coat--from Boston industrialist Bernard Goldfine, Litrico arrived in New York with a sports jacket and vicuna overcoat he intended to give the President.

The White House disavowed any knowledge of the proposed gifts and kept Litrico, who said he was unaware of the Adams furor, away from Eisenhower.

What started it all, Litrico liked to recall, was a free ticket to the opera.

On arriving in Rome from his native Catania, Litrico first found work with a small tailor and then went into business for himself. Customers were few, so when given the opera ticket he had time to cut and sew himself a dinner jacket.

Struck Up Conversation

During the intermission he struck up a conversation with Italian actor Rossano Brazzi, who asked for the name of his tailor. Brazzi became his first celebrity customer.

The year 1957 marked the first Italian fashion show to visit the Soviet Union and the 28-year-old Litrico went with it. He took along a camel’s hair overcoat he had made as a present for Khrushchev, working from photographs of the Soviet leader.

Khrushchev liked the coat and sent his measurements and his first order through the Soviet Embassy in Rome for two more overcoats, two suits, two pairs of shoes, six neckties and three hats.

When Khrushchev was ousted in 1964, Litrico was left with three suits the Soviet leader had ordered for a trip to West Germany.

Litrico told the London Sunday Times that he was concerned that his improvement of Khrushchev’s earthy image might have contributed to his downfall.