Fernando Sanchez, 70; Designer Added Style to Lingerie, At-Home Wear
Fernando Sanchez, who brought bright color and luxury fabrics to women’s lingerie and at-home wear, and helped to launch an “underwear as outerwear” trend when women began wearing his lacy camisoles out for the evening, has died. He was 70.
Sanchez died June 28 at his home in New York City. The cause was complications from an infection he developed after being bitten by a sand fly two years ago at his vacation home in Morocco, his cousin and business partner, Jano Herbosch, told Women’s Wear Daily.
He was well-established as a fashion designer when he stole the spotlight with his sumptuous lingerie.
He began his fashion career in Paris in the early 1950s, working his way up to a position at Christian Dior, where he designed lingerie and knitwear. He also designed outerwear for the furrier Revillon in the 1960s and early 1970s.
He shook convention by dying pelts green and blue and styling coats that trailed on the floor in the old Hollywood manner.
In 1973, he moved to New York City and launched his own label for lingerie and at-home wear.
“When I started doing lingerie, all you could find were woolies and polyester quilts and zip-down robes,” Sanchez said in a 1986 interview with the Chicago Tribune. He made lingerie and lounge wear in quilted satin, cut velvet, fine cotton and cashmere.
“I make clothes for home wear, for receiving friends, for beach life,” he often said.
In 1980 he added a women’s ready-to-wear line with a similar feeling to his lingerie and lounge wear. He made soft, fluid shapes of pajama-style pants, wrap jackets, camisoles and tunics.
Sanchez, who kept a home in Marrakech for some years, said he was inspired in part by the sensual wrap-and-tie dressing of Moroccan women.
He was born in Spain, the son of a Spanish father and Belgian mother. An only child, he left no immediate family survivors.
As a young teenager he loved to watch movies, which had a strong influence on his budding sense of style.
“Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and all the glamour of Hollywood in the ‘30s influenced me extremely,” he told the Associated Press in a 1996 interview.
At 16 he moved to Paris to study fashion at the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, the school where French couture techniques are taught. He became a close friend of Yves Saint Laurent, his classmate at the school.
After an apprenticeship at Nina Ricci in Paris, Sanchez was brought to Dior by Saint Laurent, who had become the rising star of the fashion house.
As he created his own signature style, Sanchez used the intricate construction techniques he learned at school in an unusual way, he explained in an interview with CNN in 1996. “I make home wear to be very, very comfortable,” he said.
