Monica Hickey, Doyenne of Bridal Gowns, Dies at 100

Monica Hickey, who for many years swathed celebrities and socialites for his or her lavish nuptials within the haute bridal salons on the New York shops Henri Bendel, Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue, died on Jan. 26 in Valle de Elqui, Chile. She was 100.

She died on the dwelling of her daughter, Caitlin Margaret Might, who introduced the dying.

Ms. Hickey ran the bridal boutique at Bendel’s underneath the corporate’s president, Geraldine Stutz, a celebrated determine in vogue retailing, from 1960 till she was employed away by Bergdorf’s in 1967 to run a division underneath her personal identify, the Bridal World of Monica Hickey.

In 1978 she returned to Bendel’s, the place for greater than a decade she directed the venerable Store for Brides on the firm’s flagship on West 57th Road in Manhattan, which had opened in 1908 and was thought-about an establishment. In 1987, Bendel’s introduced the closing of the store. The closing adopted a takeover by The Restricted two years earlier, which additionally led to a transfer to Fifth Avenue.

“By the years, the Bendel’s bride has been steadfast in one concept,” Ms. Hickey stated in an interview with The New York Occasions after the announcement. “Her costume needed to be romantic, delicate, in excellent style, streamlined, by no means frantic.”

Among the many distinguished brides Ms. Hickey served there have been the tv host Jane Pauley and three daughters of the auto magnate William Clay Ford.

Through the years, she helped costume various different notable brides, together with Amanda M. Burden, a daughter of the journal editor and socialite Babe Paley, who would go on to function the New York Metropolis planning fee underneath Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; and Margaret Lindsay, a daughter of one other New York mayor, John V. Lindsay; Phyllis George, the previous Miss America and CBS soccer host, who married John Y. Brown Jr., the Kentucky Fried Hen mogul who was elected governor of Kentucky in 1979.

She additionally helped outfit Vera Wang, who turned a celebrated bridal designer herself, however who was then the design director for Ralph Lauren ladies’s equipment and at-home put on, for her 1989 wedding to the stockbroker Arthur Becker.

After Ms. Wang opened her personal bridal boutique on Madison Avenue in 1990, she requested Ms. Hickey to run it. Ms. Hickey in the end declined the provide, though they remained associates.

“She despatched a contract for three years,” Ms. Hickey recalled on the podcast “Meet the Masters” in 2007. She thought-about it a “great alternative,” she stated, however when she instructed her husband, Peter Glushanok, a filmmaker and composer, his response was, “Do you wish to be a hen in a gilded cage?”

Ms. Hickey was born on Nov. 17, 1923, in Glasgow, the youngest of three kids of Irish dad and mom, Margaret (Ryan) Hickey, a seamstress, and Patrick Hickey, a typesetter.

Her household ceaselessly moved between cities in Scotland, Northern England and Eire throughout her childhood. When she was 14, they settled in London, the place she left faculty to assist her mom along with her home-based dressmaking enterprise.

Monica first grew enraptured with the world of luxurious, her daughter stated, throughout World Conflict II when she was evacuated from London in the course of the Blitz to the protection of an aristocratic looking lodge within the countryside.

In 1953, she and her sister, Kathleen, moved to New York to flee the deprivations of war-ravaged England. She ultimately discovered a job as an assistant purchaser within the night costume division at Bendel’s. At one level, Ms. Stutz requested her to function a short lived fill-in within the bridal division, telling her that “our purchaser, that we introduced in from Philadelphia, I’m afraid she drinks earlier than she will get right here,” Ms. Hickey stated on the podcast.

After a number of months, Ms. Stutz approached her once more, apologizing that she had but to discover a substitute. “And I stated, ‘However you probably did,’” Ms. Hickey recalled.

Whereas operating her boutiques, Ms. Hickey commonly traveled to Europe as a purchaser — and, successfully, as a tastemaker — scouting for attire by designers like Karl Lagerfeld, Ursula of Switzerland and the famous British designers David and Elizabeth Emanuel, who in 1981 invited Ms. Hickey to the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer to get an up-close take a look at the explosion of ivory silk taffeta that they had usual for the brand new princess.

At 4-foot-8-, Ms. Hickey not often bothered toting containers or hoisting elaborate robes, her daughter stated; as an alternative, she relied on her eager eye, honed on the hand of her dressmaker mom, to advise brides on the right match and draping.

She additionally served as a de facto diplomat, managing the egos of a lot of her society shoppers and their moms. After her ultimate run at Bendel’s, she spent greater than a decade operating the bridal salon at Saks and briefly consulted for Vera Wang and Kleinfeld Bridal. She retired in 2003.

Along with her daughter, Ms. Hickey is survived by 4 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren. Her husband, Mr. Glushanok, died in 1996.

Regardless of her success, Ms. Hickey confronted her share of challenges — most notably within the late Nineteen Sixties and early ’70s, when {couples} following a flower-child impulse ditched grand weddings to get hitched on sun-dappled seashores or in bucolic nation meadows.

“The ladies actually didn’t need wedding dresses in any respect,” she recalled in a 1997 interview with The Tampa Bay Occasions. “However most of them succumbed as a result of Grandmother would reduce them out of the need in the event that they didn’t.”