Richard Tam; Fashion and Interior Designer

Richard Tam, 49, California fashion and interior designer who created feminine clothes for mature women. A graduate of Stanford, Tam won fame in his 20s and ran his own West Coast couture house for seven years, making clothing in luxurious crepes, silks and chiffons for women like Ethel Kennedy, Dinah Shore, Polly Bergen, Lena Horne and Dina Merrill. He then moved to Greece to study architecture and interior design, returning to his native San Francisco as an interior designer. In San Francisco on Wednesday of what was described only as a long illness.