Gloria Sachs | Fashion designer, 85

Gloria Sachs, 85, a fashion designer who tapped into a growing market of women seeking understated elegance in clothes as they rose to new heights in the workplace in the 1970s and '80s, died last Monday at her Manhattan home.

Under her label, Gloria Sachs Designs Ltd., Ms. Sachs seized on a cohort of women coming out of college in the 1970s, entering the white-collar workplace, and searching for clothing that would be stylish and comfortable while also being appropriate for the office.

Among an array of designs, she came up with ankle-length skirts; tailored silk shirts precisely matched to gabardine pants; and linen and Dacron suits and jackets that could be combined with a print shirt or a print kilt.

She offered shirts that could be worn one over the other, with the sleeves of the one on top rolled up. Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, and Neiman Marcus were among the stores that sold her line.

Gloria Sachs Designs was in operation from 1970 to 1994, a period when the percentage of women in professional and management jobs showed significant increases.

Ms. Sachs was born in Manhattan and grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y. After graduating from Skidmore College with a degree in fine arts in 1947, she studied textile design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She then went to Paris to become an apprentice to the modernist artist Fernand Leger and to be a fashion model.

Returning to New York in 1951, she was hired by Bloomingdale's, where she rose to fashion coordinator. In 1958 she opened Red Barn, a clothing design company for preteens that preceded the founding of Gloria Sachs Designs. - N.Y. Times News Service