Scaasi: Elegance and Glamour from Day to Night
An exhibition of pieces by designer Arnold Scaasi from the permanent collections of the Avenir Museum. The exhibition featured glamorous evening wear and stylishly smart daywear, donated to the collection by Scaasi in the mid-1990s. The exhibition explores Scaasi’s love of color.
Envision for a moment…
A full-length magenta and persimmon cut velvet dress with a flounce of ruby net, or perhaps,
A bright orange taffeta dress served up with a turquoise and lime green stole, or consider,
A barrage of orange circles on a full skirted evening dress nestled under a bright red coat.
Audacious? Absolutely! …and positively Scaasi.
Arnold Scaasi (May 8, 1930 — August 4, 2015) was fearless in his use of color. In fact, he embraced innovation – in design, style and color. Like an artist, Scaasi painted fashion stories with saturated hues and captivating colors – robin egg blue, sunburst gold, scarlet, sapphire, emerald green, and candy pink. Colors to Scaasi were like luxurious morsels to be savored. Couture dress is much like a work of fine art. And like fine art, color is at its core. known for creating glamorous colorful eveningwear from the mid-1950s to the early2000s, he dressed the fashion elite from show business stars Barbra Streisand and Mary Tyler Moore to First Ladies Mamie Eisenhower and Laura Bush.
Born Arnold Isaacs in Montréal, Québec, Canada, Scaasi was interested in fashion design from a very young age. Fashion was in his blood. His father worked as a furrier, and Arnold also spent time in Australia as a young teenager with his very fashionable Aunt Ida. He was highly influenced by his Aunt’s couture wardrobe filled with designer names like Chanel and Schiaparelli. While living in Melbourne, Arnold attended high school, where he took classes in sketching and drawing. Aunt Ida encouraged his love of sketching and was instrumental in his decision to enroll in the design program at the École Cotnoir-Capponi upon his return to Canada.
After attending the program in Montréal, Arnold was off to Paris at the age of seventeen. He completed an additional year of study at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne College in Paris. Very quickly he was noticed by the Parisian fashion industry. He apprenticed at Paquin, one of the most important couture houses of the time. He was then offered a position at the House of Dior but, not wanting to wait for the next collection debut to begin his work, with Dior’s encouragement he returned to North America. This time he was bound for New York City.
Scaasi arrived in New York with a letter of introduction written by Christian Dior himself, who suggested the young man should enquire at the studio of renowned American designer Charles James. Scaasi worked with James for two years before striking out on his own. He quickly found success in the New York fashion scene and was awarded the 1958 Coty American Fashion Critics’ Award, considered to be one of the most prestigious honors in the American fashion industry.
During a 1950s photoshoot for print advertisements for his designs, a colleague suggested Arnold reverse the spelling of his last name for a more Italian, and presumably more sophisticated, sound. From that point on, Arnold Isaacs was known as Arnold Scaasi.
