NEW YORK — With a $5 million gift to the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the Geoffrey Beene Estate has set the philanthropy bar high.
Designers and other industry figures had reason to cheer when CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg announced the gift at a cocktail party last week. In the past 15 to 20 years, the CFDA has only given out about $300,000 in grants, according to industry sources.
“This sets a good precedent for American designers to give something back to the industry,” said Lambertson Truex founder Richard Lambertson, who was instrumental in coordinating the arrangement. Lambertson sits on the boards of the CFDA and the Geoffrey Beene Estate and was president of Beene’s company in 1992.
As part of the gift, Beene’s estate will offer scholarships in his name to support design students. There will also be a Geoffrey Beene Scholar, an endowment awarded to the top student. The estate’s executor and Geoffrey Beene label president, G. Thompson Hutton, intends to find some synergy between the CFDA and the Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center so that both work together to support cancer-related causes. Last fall, the estate donated $44 million to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan to establish the facility in Beene’s name. In the next month or so, the research center will review applications for grants submitted by scientists and doctors.
Beene, who attended Tulane University’s medical school before deciding to pursue a career in fashion, died in 2004. His estate is setting up a foundation to improve awareness and education about Alzheimer’s disease. About five million Americans are afflicted with the disease and another 15 million are expected to suffer from it in the next 10 years, Hutton noted. Beene was committed to fighting the disease, partly because he lost a friend to it, Hutton said.
In light of the $5 million endowment, the CFDA has renamed its lifetime achievement award for Beene, who received the honor in 1997, one of four CFDA awards he won during his career. Jewelry designer Robert Lee Morris will be the first recipient for the renamed award.
“Geoffrey Beene was the quintessential American designer,” said CFDA executive director Steven Kolb.
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The CFDA will work with its pool of 16 design schools to create teaching tools using the body of Beene’s work for lesson plans, he said. There is also discussion about posting Beene’s archival material online at the CFDA’s Web site to create a virtual classroom. These initiatives should be up and running in the next year to 18 months, Kolb said. More details will be spelled out in six weeks or so.
Beene shunned the spotlight, preferring to work behind the scenes, honing his craft.
“Geoffrey lived for design,” Hutton said. “Being a couturier is what got him out of bed every day. He decided he couldn’t trust licensees to do what he” did, referring to the designer’s decision to stop licensing women’s products.
Beene’s estate has also donated $10 million to the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan, $10 million to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and $1 million to the Young Menswear Association.
The Geoffrey Beene label generates between $500 million and $600 million in annual retail sales, primarily from products such as men’s dress shirts, neckwear and belts. The company is not producing women’s apparel but expects to do so in the future, Hutton said. Discussions are underway with different parties about a potential deal, but nothing has been finalized, Hutton said. He would not specify if it is a licensing deal, acquisition or joint venture. But, like the company’s namesake, Hutton is very particular about licensing and what he is looking for.
“We will not do any transactions unless they are thoroughly meaningful and will be long-lasting,” Hutton said.