Clare Potter; Fashion Designer for Women’s Sportswear
Clare Potter, 95, an American fashion designer of the 1940s and ‘50s who helped invent women’s sportswear. Along with Tina Leser and Claire McCardell, Potter “really inspired the market,” said Maggie Murray, visual director of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles. Potter became a fashion star under the sponsorship of Dorothy Shaver, the legendary head of New York’s Lord & Taylor department store in the 1930s. She won the Lord & Taylor Sportswear Award in 1937 and the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award in 1939. Compared with Leser and McCardell, Potter offered a more refined approach, favoring well-tailored linens and burnished wools in pants, shorts, pajamas, skirts and other sportswear. In the 1940s, she was known for her designs for a bathing suit that featured a little bra and bloomers, an evening sweater, a hand-knit cardigan and a sidesaddle draped skirt, samples of which are included in “Designing Women: American Style 1940-1960,” a current show at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn. Potter designed a blue wool dress that Eleanor Roosevelt wore to meet the king and queen of England. In the 1950s she set up shop in a converted horse stable on a farm in Nyack, N.Y., and at her death was raising camellias and Dalmatians at her home on Lake Nebo in Fort Ann, N.Y. On Jan. 5 in Fort Ann.
Bobby Specht; Skater, Coach With Ice Capades
Bobby Specht, 77, skater with the Ice Capades for 25 years. Specht was the senior men’s national champion in figure skating in 1942 and would have skated in the 1944 Olympics if World War II had not forced cancellation of the winter games. He joined the Ice Capades instead and went on to star in productions of Walt Disney’s “Snow White” and George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Donna Atwood was his frequent partner on the ice. When he retired from skating, Specht stayed on with the Ice Capades for another decade as coach to the principal skaters. On Sunday of emphysema in Palm Springs, where he lived in retirement.
Orlandus Wilson; Member of Influential Gospel Group
Orlandus Wilson, 81, a founding member of the Golden Gate Quartet, an influential gospel group known for infusing spirituals with jazz and swing. Wilson, born in Chesapeake, Va., joined the Golden Gate Jubilee Singers in 1934 when he and the other three members were in high school. Within two years, the quartet was singing five days a week for a radio station in Columbia, S.C., and in 1937 was signed by RCA Records’ Bluebird label. Appearing with artists such as Lionel Hampton and Benny Goodman in John Hammond’s “Spirituals to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938 brought the group national stature. In 1941, the quartet became the first black singers to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington. During World War II, it recorded songs such as “Stalin Wasn’t Stallin’ ” and later appeared in such films as “Hollywood Canteen” and “A Star Is Born.” The quartet moved to Europe in the late 1950s, eventually making Paris its base. Wilson, the last of the quartet’s original members, managed the group in addition to arranging and composing music. The group gave its first U.S. performance in four decades in 1994, when United in Group Harmony, an organization devoted to preserving the history of vocal harmony, inducted it into its hall of fame. On Dec. 30 in Paris.
