Franc Vitale, a longtime homeowner in Wainscott, died at his home in Weston, Connecticut, on March 11. He was 83.
Born June 10, 1926, to Marie Rose and John Vitale of New York City, he moved with his mother and three sisters to rural Cairo, New York, as a young teenager.
A high school teacher, noting his flair for art and design, urged him to apply for a scholarship to a new school established in 1944, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City. Struggling on his student’s budget, he modeled part-time, appearing as a slim, dark-haired “Mr. Jantzen” for that swimsuit company in the early 1950s. Upon graduation from FIT, Mr. Vitale began work in the studio of famed designer Hattie Carnegie, then went on to dress the glamorous denizens of Bergdorf Goodman’s private sales salons—among them ingénue Anne Bancroft, many Manhattan socialites, and Bette Davis, who became a good friend and gardening buddy in Weston. The two shared a weakness for native ferns and Stouffer’s frozen pizza.
Mr. Vitale’s greatest professional success was in the 1960s and 1970s, designing stylish, witty dress and play clothes for the long neglected children’s market. With founding partner Ruth Combs of Hendersonville, North Carolina, he designed for and helped run Ruth Originals, a company with its own factories that by 1965 was selling more than 750,000 dresses, suits and play clothes in all 50 states and several foreign countries—and winning design awards for originality. When the partners sold their multi-million dollar company to the large French children’s wear company, Absorba, in 1977, Mr. Vitale stayed on as a designer for a few more years.
On leaving the fashion business, for 45 years, he husbanded a property he called The Barn, a converted poultry and livestock barn on five acres in Weston; and since the early 1960s, he lavished the same attentions on his Wainscott cottage, a former ice house on Georgica Pond. He divided his time between Weston, where he renovated and resold many antique homes, and his cottage on Georgica Pond.
Mr. Vitale was well known on the East End for his lifelong commitment to preservation of open spaces and his opposition to overdevelopment. A masterful gardener with a longtime reverence for heirloom and native northeast species, Mr. Vitale turned to his avocation full-time in the early 1980s, after a distinguished career in fashion and real estate.
Mr. Vitale is survived by two sisters, Lorraine Knapp of Coxsackie, New York, and Joan Robinson of Saugerties, New York; a niece, Ramona Banks of Saugerties; and a nephew, Rudolf Knapp of Minnesota. He was predeceased by a sister, Rosemarie Porto.
Interment will be at Willowbrook Cemetery in Westport, Connecticut. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions to the Weston Public Library—where Mr. Vitale was a frequent browser in the gardening and design stacks— 87 School Street, Weston, MA 02493 would be appreciated by the family.
on Mar 30, 2010