Donald Brooks, 77; Fashion Designer Also Created Costumes for Broadway and Film

Donald Brooks, a designer who won awards for his work in fashion as well as in theater and television, died Monday on New York’s Long Island. He was 77.

Brooks, who divided his time between New York City and Long Island in recent years, died at Stony Brook University Hospital on Long Island, where he was taken after a heart attack in late July, according to Gerald Blum, a longtime friend.

Brooks began his fashion career working on window displays at Lord & Taylor’s Fifth Avenue store in the early 1950s. He was a student at Parsons School of Design in New York City at the time, and store president Dorothy Shaver saw some of his fashion sketches. She asked him to design a collection exclusively for Lord & Taylor.

He later worked with Claire McCardell, a pioneer of American sportswear who was chief designer for Townley Frocks, a high-quality women’s fashion house in New York City. Brooks succeeded McCardell as chief designer after she died in 1958.

He was known for his simply cut dresses, often worn with a matching stole or coat. He liked bright colors and prints and used fabrics that he designed, including python-skin printed jersey, geranium-printed and sunflower-printed cottons. He also liked bold, graphic black-and-white prints.

Brooks opened his own business in 1965 with the backing of Ben Shaw, a fashion entrepreneur who also financed the launch of Bill Blass, Geoffrey Beene and Halston. Inside the industry, Brooks became known as one of fashion’s “three Bs” with Blass and Beene.

“Donald never looked to Paris or Rome for ideas about women’s fashion,” said Blum, who met Brooks in the mid-1960s. “He thought about how an American woman should look, how she should dress.”

Some of his early customers included First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and New York socialite Babe Paley.

In 1962, Brooks won the first of his three Coty Awards, the top honor in fashion. That year, he made his Broadway debut as the costume designer for “No Strings,” a musical by Rodgers & Hammerstein that starred Diahann Carroll. He won a Drama Critics Award for his work.

He was successful as a fashion designer who also created costumes for Broadway productions, more than 20 in all. Some of his bigger credits include “Barefoot in the Park” (1967), starring Elizabeth Ashley and Robert Redford, “Fade Out Fade In” with Carol Burnett and “Flora, the Red Menace,” with Liza Minnelli, both in 1965.

He branched into film work when he designed costumes for “The Cardinal,” whose stars included Tom Tryon and John Huston, a 1963 drama about a social activist Catholic priest who rose to cardinal. The movie required about 2,000 costumes, including 138 ball gowns for several party scenes. Brooks was nominated for an Academy Award for his work. It was the first of three Oscar nominations he received, although he never won the prize.

“Star!” (1968), another film with a vast costume wardrobe by Brooks, starred Julie Andrews as the flamboyant actress Gertrude Lawrence. The ‘20s-era clothes that Andrews wore included tailored suits with fox fur stoles, drop-waist “flapper” dresses in short and long versions, a pleated cape and a damask evening coat. Brooks translated them into contemporary designs for his fall 1968 collection.

“He had a great deal of drama in his ready-to-wear collections, but he made it wearable,” Blum said.

Brooks worked on seven films and seven television productions, earning an Emmy award in 1983 for “The Letter,” a murder mystery starring Lee Remick.

He also taught costume design for 40 years at Parsons School of Design, which held an exhibit of his designs in 2003.

“Donald was a relationship person,” said Kathleen Maggio, who curated the Parsons exhibit. Despite his talent as a fashion designer, she said, “he loved working with individual actresses.”

He cultivated his ready-to-wear customers in a similar way. The entire exhibit at Parsons consisted of outfits on loan, from the closets of Brooks’ customers, Maggio said. “Many of the lenders came to the exhibit. They all had stories to tell about where they wore the outfit and how much it meant to them.”

Brooks was born Donald Marc Blumberg in New York City.

He attended Syracuse University as a fine-arts student and planned to become a scenery designer in the theater but got interested in fashion.

Brooks is survived by his sister, Kay Blick, a niece and a grandniece.