Michael Leva, Who Found Fashion Fame Early, Is Dead at 62

By 1995, nevertheless, he was consulting for a Japanese firm, the Miki Company.

“It’s good cash for little or no headache,” he told Constance C.R. White of The Instances. “I actually made no cash after I labored alone. I make good cash now.”

Michael Leva was born on Jan. 15, 1961, in Denville, N.J., and grew up in Morristown. His father, James, was an electrical utility firm government. His mom, Marie (Marinaro) Leva, was a homemaker and center college librarian.

He had deliberate to check panorama structure on the Rhode Island College of Design however switched his main to attire design his first 12 months. “I appreciated the immediacy of grabbing the material, throwing it on the shape, pinning it,” he instructed Vogue in 1989. “It’s much like what I really like about gardening: the hands-on expertise. Structure is simply tons of planning and drawings, and, you realize, I simply misplaced curiosity in it.”

Mr. Leva was an ardent, expert gardener. Even after he started his style enterprise, his mother told The Times, he would take the prepare out to northern New Jersey to his dad and mom’ home in Chester and work within the backyard till darkish. He created an all-white perennial backyard there, which was his inspiration for his all-white night assortment within the spring of 1990. It “drew reward for its delicate materials and flowing strains,” The Instances reported.

After closing his enterprise, Mr. Leva was a branding and design marketing consultant for numerous corporations, together with Macy’s, J.Jill, Victoria’s Secret, Informal Nook and C. Marvel, the short-lived retail enterprise of Christopher Burch, Tory Burch’s former husband. He helped write “Recipes for Events” (2014), a e-book on entertaining, with Nancy Parker. He moved to Rhode Island in 2018 and lectured at RISD.