All Obituary articles – Page 2
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Ilse Jacobsen passes away
Ilse Rohde Jacobsen died on Oct. 23 at the age of 62. The Danish designer had been fighting cancer since last summer, according to a statement by her company IJH A/S. ”She fell asleep peacefully surrounded by her family,” the statement said. According to the daily B.T., Jacobsen was stricken ...
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Issey Miyake dies at 84
The Japanese designer Issey Miyake has died at the age of 84. Miyake was born in Hiroshima in 1938 and moved to Paris in the 1960s, where he worked with fashion designers Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy. After moving to New York for a short time, he headed back ...
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ArticleVito Artioli passes away
Vito Artioli passed away at the age of 85 in Tradate, north of Milan, where is located the family company Calzaturificio Star, a producer of luxury men’s footwear under the Artioli brand. Artioli was chairman of the Italian footwear association Assocalzaturifici, then called Anci, from 2007 to 2011 and headed ...
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Superfeet founder passes away
Dennis Brown, the founder of Northwest Podiatric Laboratory and Superfeet Worldwide, a leading American supplier of comfort insoles, died on Dec. 31 at his home in Blaine, Washington. He was 96 years old. He started Northwest Podiatric Laboratory in 1964, where he developed patented orthotic products and casting techniques. ...
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Pioneering footwear designer Armando Pollini dies at 85
Armando Pollini, a veteran footwear designer and entrepreneur, the founder of Armando Pollini Design and an avid experimenter who created many iconic shoe models, died of a heart attack on June 18 at the age of 85. Born in the Italian town of Vigevano, near Milan, in 1935, Pollini ...
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Vans sneaker company co-founder Paul Van Doren dies
Paul Van Doren, a co-founder of Vans, has passed away on May 6 at the age of 90, shortly after the publication of his biography, titled “Authentic.” He started as a service boy at a rubber factory at the age of 16. He acquired his independence in 1966 when he ...
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Alber Elbaz dies
Richemont announced the death of Alber Elbaz at the age of 59. In October 2019, the Swiss luxury goods company entered a joint venture with the designer which led to the creation of the brand AZ Factory. According to media reports, Elbaz died of Covid-19. Elbaz is best known for ...
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Pierre Cardin dies at 98
The French designer Pierre Cardin died at the age of 98 at the American hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. He was born in Italy, but to escape fascism his family moved to France when he was two. Cardin “never forgot his origins while having an unconditional love for France,” his ...
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ArticleFormer Zappos head Tony Hsieh dies
Tony Hsieh, who ran the footwear and clothing online retailer Zappos.com for about two decades, died at the age of 46 due to complications from injuries sustained in a house fire. The fire broke out on Nov. 18 in New London, Connecticut, and Hsieh died on Nov. 27 from the ...
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ArticleHarald Neisser, industry veteran and former Rohde managing director, dies at 68
Shoe expert and industry insider Harald Neisser died on Sept. 20, after a serious illness. Serving most recently as a consultant for the German firm Erich Rohde, where he was previously managing director, Neisser was 68 years old. He was active in the shoe industry for decades in different capacities ...
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ArticleBob Gore, inventor of Gore-Tex, has died
Robert W. “Bob” Gore, chairman emeritus of the board of directors of W. L. Gore & Associates, died on Sept. 17 at the age of 83. Gore sat on the board of his family’s materials science company for 57 years, 30 of them as chairman, and served as president from ...
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CIC vice-president Sergio Panossian passes away
Sergio Panossian, the vice-president of the Argentinean footwear association Cámara de la Industria del Calzado (CIC), has passed away. Panossian was a popular and influential representative of the country’s footwear industry. His family indicated that he was victim of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Martin Krist, former head of Esprit’s shoe division, dies at 55
Martin Krist, former head of Esprit’s shoe division and an innovative leader in the shoe industry, died unexpectedly in June at the age of 55. Krist was with Esprit for over 17 years, from July 1998 until the beginning of 2016, shaping the fashion manufacturer’s shoe business strategy for many ...
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Sergio Rossi dies at 84
The iconic footwear designer Sergio Rossi, founder of the eponymous firm, died on April 2. He had been admitted to the intensive care unit of the Bufalini hospital in Cesena, Italy, after contracting the novel coronavirus, which has heavily affected the country. The son of a shoemaker, Rossi was born ...
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Obituary for Luciano Mercalli
Luciano Mercalli, head of Cerim, has died after being infected with the novel coronavirus. Cerim, based in the Italian town of Vigevano, specializes in machines for the production of footwear. Mercalli, 78, fell ill after attending Simac Tanning Tech 2020, the trade fair that was held in Milan on Feb ...
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Obituary for Bob Campbell
Bob Campbell, founder and chief executive of BBC International, died on Feb. 17. He was 82. Raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Campbell spent more than 60 years in footwear, 20 of them at Kinney Shoes and its parent, F.W. Woolworth. He has been praised as a man of vision. In 1975, ...
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The founder of Over Teak, Cosimo Damiano Vitobello, has passed...
The founder of Over Teak, Cosimo Damiano Vitobello, has passed away at the age of 79. Vitobello founded Over Teak in Barletta, in the Italian region of Puglia, in 1990. He opened his first store, where shoes were manually crafted, back in 1958, when he was only 18. Over Teak ...
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Raymond Massaro, the legendary French cobbler, has died in Paris...
Raymond Massaro, the legendary French cobbler, has died in Paris at the age of 90. He was the grandson of Sébastien Massaro, who founded his workshop in 1894 at 2, rue de la Paix in Paris. Raymond Massaro took over the business in 1957. Also in the 1950s, he designed ...
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Georgy Bidegain passed away on March 27. He was 85...
Georgy Bidegain passed away on March 27. He was 85 years old. He was an uncle of Jean-Pierre Bidegain, the well-known journalist and publisher who recently retired. Together with his brother José Bidegain, he built up Babybotte, the well-known brand of shoes for toddlers between the ages of one and ...
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Paul Golbert, the founder of Pajar Canada, passed away on...
Paul Golbert, the founder of Pajar Canada, passed away on Dec. 25, at the age of 92. Pajar Canada, founded in 1963, is a five-generation family-owned footwear and outerwear company based in Montreal. Golbert was born in France in a shoemaking family, and emigrated to Canada in the 1950s, starting ...
