Gustave Tassell
Gustave Tassell (February 4, 1926 – June 9, 2014) was an American fashion designer and Coty Award winner who became a fashion star in the early 1960s with starkly refined clothes that appealed to women like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Greer Garson and Princess Grace of Monaco. Tassell (pronounced Tass-SELL) designed clothes that Jackie Kennedy wore as first lady on a highly publicized goodwill tour of India in 1962. That year the fashion press hailed him as one of America's hottest new designers. Early life and career Tassell was born on February 4, 1926, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Lena (née Schiller; 1901–1973) and Samuel Tassell (1896–1963). His father was a businessman who owned amusement parks. Encouraged by his mother, he studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. After serving in the Army, Tassell was studying painting in New York City in the late 1940s when he took a job in the advertising and display department for Hattie Carnegie, a pioneer in the fashion design world who was well known for both custom-made and high-end ready-to-wear clothes. Inspired by Carnegie designer Norman Norell, he shifted into designing and in 1952 moved to Paris, where he made sketches for various couturiers,