The fashion trade journal Women's Wear Daily reported in April that as far as birthday parties go this one's going to be a whopper to pay tribute to the late Bill Blass Fort Wayne native and iconic fashion designer the Fort Wayne , Indiana community is organizing the Bill Blass centennial an array of events spanning 100 days beginning June 22nd.

The far reaching tribute features special exhibitions at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, the Fort Wayne History Center and so much more.

The celebration in fact includes activities with South Side High School classes alma mater, the Allen County Public Library, the Lake Community and Connections with the New York based Bill Blass Archives and the Sage Collection at Indiana University.

I don't we're going to get all this in a half an hour in it we're going to be talking with the organizers for the Bill Blass blast.

>> One hundred days of Bill Blass on this week's prime time.

Good evening.

I'm Bruce Haines and with is Kathy Carrier.

>> She is the team leader with the Bill Blass Centennial Party and with Kathy is Jenna Gilley.

>> She is associate curator of exhibitions at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art.

Welcome to you both.

>> This is Jenna and there is Cathy and we're so glad you're so glad to be here.

Thrilled to be it's blast testing.

>> This is what I'm hearing.

And and in the spirit of that alliteration, let's talk about William Ralph, bless the person and maybe if you will some Blasberg six about the man and the fact that oh, I didn't know he was from Fort Wayne .

>> I'm hearing folks saying that now.

Yeah.

So Bill Blass is a Fort Wayne native.

He grew up on South Carolina right across from South Side High School where he went to high school.

He is a talented fashion designer, was internationally known certainly one of America's most famous fashion designers.

That's what a lot of people know him for .

He also is a World War II hero and was in the Ghost Army which very few people know because the Ghost Army was not a well known unit in World War II and the fact that he's from Fort Wayne is remarkable to me.

I'm an entrepreneur.

He's one of the most successful, most well known entrepreneurs our city's ever seen and nobody knows this guy so that's who he is.

>> He's a fashion designer and World War Two hero in a four way native and as you've been working with the exhibitions which we'll talk more about in a second, how had your learning curve been about Bill blessed to this point?

>> Well, I was one of those people who didn't know who Blass was before starting this project.

>> I was given a book by one of my coworkers at the museum and I personally have always been really interested in fashion.

And how about links to identity and art?

>> And I had never heard this guy before.

I was looking through this wonderful book which actually Cathy is a copy of it and will be for sale after the exhibition.

>> It's a great book but yeah I did not know who he was and I was a newbie coming to Fort Wayne wanted to get more adjusted and to get to know our local heroes and so I hopped on this project but it was amazing to me.

I feel like he was very popular in the eighties and nineties so a lot of my parents know who he is but a lot of people under I'd say probably the age of 40 don't know who Bill Blass was which is really a shame because when I started reading about him and how much Indiana and his hometown influenced him, I felt a connection to him as a young creative who at one point did want to escape Indiana.

I feel like a lot of young people have had that feeling but it took me leaving to really appreciate where I came from and you can see that a lot with blast too.

He kind of went on a similar journey.

Another thing that I think is really interesting about him is kind of what Kathy mentioned.

He was not one of these people that was a quick person to gain success.

It took him his whole life and it took him a really, really long time to achieve his dream.

And I think so many times these days young people are told to go on and achieve those dreams.

But you know, it's not always as easy as we would like and so Blaster's a really good example of actually doing the work to to make it happen.

>> It struck me too that the community of Fort Wayne was quite blessed at this point.

Imagine having Carole Lombard went into town and having Bill the other end of town and Blast looked to Lombard among others for inspiration.

>> Right?

He did certainly there's some early photos.

We have an image and you wouldn't know it to see two little children in the backyard playing stickball not too far from south started high school more than likely.

But by the time the child reaches fifteen as you say his avocations are getting him in touch with New York City even at that age which was stunning .

Yeah, his history with that is to me crazy because my father was about Bill Blastoise age my father was born and raised during the Depression which was so here's Bill Blass in a house on South Calhoun and his father took his life through suicide in the house he's been raised at five when Blass was five.

He was then raised by a single mother who was a dressmaker in that house and so bless in his autobiography which is wonderful there Blas he talks about how he occupied himself by drawing that it was a really good escape for him during the Depression in a very poor time.

I mean my father's description of of living through the Depression kind of brought that alive for me with Bill Blass.

So then Blash is sketching his mother's making dresses in the House.

He starts going to art school here in Fort Wayne , takes the trolley all the way past Carol Lombards house to school and he starts selling these sketch designs to a manufacturing firm Caldmore in New York during the Depression for twenty five dollars which today the South Side economics teacher tells me is worth five hundred and nine dollars and twenty five cents I mean five hundred nine and twenty five cents for a fifteen year old to earn during the Depression is crazy.

Yeah so as an entrepreneur even in high school he was selling his dress designs absolutely incredible and all of this and for looking back on a career a fifty year career plus in business alone one hundred years overall that we celebrate on the 22nd of the month.

>> But you don't really know what kind of career you have until you look back and that retrospective in a way allows you to now help others look forward.

So the question I'm asking you now essentially is what kind of a progressive party are we going to have over 100 days of Bill Blass centennial?

I mean this is an amazing how do you tell that kind of story?

>> Kathie, let me start with you.

Yeah.

So his birthday he would have been one hundred on June twenty second of this year and so we thought if we're going to celebrate this man's life and recognize his achievements because we are the city he was born and raised and when should we do it, we thought well let's start on June twenty second but let's do for one hundred days.

So we just decided to have the celebration for one hundred days and the community has I've I've lived here my whole life .

I've never seen any group of organizations jump on board the way this community has.

It's like post covid we all want something to celebrate and and do and reconnect with but we've got the Fort Wayne Museum of Art doing an exhibit which opens on June twenty second.

That's the fashion side we've got the History Center Todd Pelfrey jumped on board.

They're doing the exhibit of his life and the Ghost Army .

We've got the National Veterans Memorial Shrine and Museum on Odey Road.

We're so proud to be working with them.

They have an extensive ghost army exhibit that we've brought to town just for this.

So those three museum exhibits are the linchpin of what we can do.

But then we have the Allen County Public Library jumped on board all 14 locations will have to go kits for kids to do learning activities on both fashion and ghost army all summer the Museum of Art has a children's area that will have a blast port that kids can get stamped and then they go to school PO five on five Scoop's on state and get free ice cream.

We've got the blast design the Lincoln Continental the interior of that car and Bob Thomas who owns the Lincoln dealership on Coliseum will have two vintage cars there during the hundred days we've got visit Fort Wayne's involved anyhow.

There's a build last bridge now so we've got all of these things that'll be on a map that will be that people can come to Fort Wayne , enjoy view, see and do throughout the one hundred days and a good time to also start putting up a couple of moments where you can be able to find information about all one hundred days.

There is a Facebook page and in this modern era we even have a QR code to go with that.

So if you have a nearby cell phone, want to take a picture of your TV screen it really works trustme or go to your Google machine and on Facebook look for 100 days of Bill Blass type in Bill Blass and you'll see what you're seeing now and I love the when in doubt it and there is a running inventory if you will, a real time catch up of what it is that is all taking place here and to which all of us are invited here is a person, Jenna, who has been involved in women's fashion.

He was the first to launch a menswear line.

He was the first to be in his own advertising, the first to indeed look at designing the insides of automobiles at the request of Lincoln Mercury Baskets.

>> But he turned that down.

You only have so many hours of the day.

Yeah, after all definitely as a curator of an exhibit of exhibitions rather how do you tell a story like this?

Well, it's really tough because like what we've talked about his career spanned over fifty years and you know, at the beginning when we were just a little rag tag team, we weren't really sure if we were going to be able to accumulate enough objects for this show because sadly in in Fort Wayne itself we didn't have a lot of objects to work with.

But like Cathy is mentioned as soon as we kind of spread the word people just hopped on board and we're really generous.

We had people DMAs off our Facebook group that they knew Bill Blass or had a tie to Bill Blass and wanted to send us things and so this has really been not only a community effort but just a whole whole community as in the country to come together for the show which is really exciting to see.

But what I tried to do with the shows was to separate it as much I could but also still make each section whole.

>> If you were just to see a certain part.

But they are meant to be a dual exhibition that kind of complements one another.

So I do encourage people to see both shows.

But yes, the exhibition at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art is going to cover his fashion journey throughout fifty years we have almost twenty ensembles that he designed throughout that those those time periods which kind of just shows not only his own design esthetic and how that's changed but also how fashion has evolved over the decades and also fashion as a celebrated craft that we don't really talk about very much from an art perspective seeing couture and handmade things which Blass was very adamant about quality and things being made in the country.

Unfortunately fast fashion has taken over a lot and we don't see that very much anymore.

So fashion is blossomed made.

It is kind of a lost art in some ways.

And then at the History Center we have what Cathy's sort of mentioned the life of Bill Blass and the Ghost Army which is really exciting because we'll have some never before seen objects on display from close friends and family.

This is things that was in his home that he gave to people.

So you'll see a really personal side of glass which you wouldn't know if you just knew him for his fashions.

>> It should be noted right here and now too that this is a very unique opportunity for the history, certainly the Museum of Art to be engaged together in this kind of storytelling.

So truly to get the full report, be sure to visit both.

You have one hundred days you can make this happen.

>> But the part about the ghost army people will think Cathy well that's nothing I've really heard before and that's because hardly anyone has really heard about it due to the secret nature of it all.

>> Share a little bit about why ghost Army and why Bill Blass in it.

>> Yeah, so I had my father was in World War II.

I had no idea there was a Ghost Army.

I mean I didn't know it and the vast majority of people that we talked to and as we've been doing this project, nobody seems it I in fact I can't think of a single person since we began planning this around Halloween who knew both his fashion and his ghost army experience.

So the Ghost Army was a World War two battalion with eleven hundred creative people and the US Army used them to deceive the Germans during the war.

So Bill Blass talks about his experiences in his autobiography In The Ghost Army .

He had twenty one different military.

I don't know what what you call it they're not battles because there's no weapons but they created fake tanks and fake sounds and all this deception and so it was kept secret for forty years because I think the military wanted to use that strategy perhaps in other military engagements so nobody knew about it and it was finally made public just this year.

Rick Buyer who's coming to town in September who wrote a wonderful book about the ghost army he pursued and pursued and pursued the Congressional Gold Medal for the Ghost Army and in fact after seven years pursuing it, you were finally awarded it in the first quarter of this year.

So it's just coincidental that we're celebrating Bill Blass his life and his achievements and this is the year he was given the Congressional Gold Medal for his work in the Ghost Army in World War Two .

>> What a hero.

It really is amazing.

And if you will we hear about the Disney imagined years.

>> This is the the the Hogan's Heroes, if you will of the US Army in terms of deception and visual aural radio broadcasts, all of that and it makes sense to certainly have someone like Bill Blass on your team.

>> When Rick Beyer put together his documentary about the Ghost Army, he by default had to mention some reference to Fort Wayne Swan and he did and it looks like this.

>> Take a look.

Another artist constantly sketching was a 21 year old from Indiana named Bill Blass.

>> Bill Blass great guy, wonderful knew what he wanted read Vogue and his Foxhole.

The rest of us were a bunch of slobs but not glass.

>> He was always dressed to the nines.

We all had the same uniforms but leave blessed to have his pressed or something glass filled his notebooks with ideas for women's clothing, even sketching a logo he wanted to use for his fashion designs after the war.

>> Those of us from New York and I thought we were very sophisticated but Bill of course came from Fort Wayne , Indiana and was far more sophisticated than most of us.

>> We will have our conversation with Rick Beyer, the documentarian and filmmaker.

We will speak with Bill or Rick rather next Friday night at seven thirty here on PrimeTime and the documentary The Ghost Army will be seen on June twenty six, the two o'clock right here on PBS Fort Wayne.

So part of that celebration continuing and you think that's exciting enough in life to just then return to civilian experiences and live the balance of your your time doing things that are useful?

>> Bill really took that to a new zip code in terms of his own fashion growth, his career growth and the licensing growth and it seems like I was just making a note, for example, of a couple of the firsts that Bill Blass had been responsible for .

He was the first designer to be bold enough to star in his own ads.

>> Apparently he was the first American to incorporate fabrics fabrics traditionally only found menswear.

He made a men's line who knew that in addition to women's couture fashion and was really the first guy to pull the curtain back and say this is what designers do come look at us and competed with other American designers at an international level you had a chance to get to Seventh Avenue as part of the planning for this party.

>> Kathy .

>> And what was it like at Bill Blass Limited?

Well, we Linda was is one of our team members tracked them down and got ourselves invited to build Last Limited in New York and frankly we didn't know what we were going to find but we thought, well, you know, we'll go we'll see if they have an archive.

We were shocked.

They have five hundred boxes of archived material articles and all of his fashion lines are documented.

They had two hundred huge cases of prints.

They had fifteen hundred dresses and outfits that he had designed.

And so when we got there the owners of Bill Blass limited were very gracious and allowed us in to comb through it.

We created a list of what we wanted to show here in Fort Wayne .

I'd love to bring it all to Fort Wayne just last week we received it and Janice checked it all in.

So we we have on loan over one hundred items and they'll blast it.

>> But to me I walked in there and it was so visual there were eighteen racks, seventy five dresses to Iraq.

These are high couture glossy glamorous glittered dresses that he designed and I'm a seamstress.

I thought you know how did he sourced the fabric.

How do you get these button maids.

I mean they were all different and I just assumed that's how he made his money.

I'm an entrepreneur.

I'm always thinking about well how did he make his money?

So then we watched a video.

He has a number of videos about his life and he actually says I didn't make any money at all doing high couture fashion.

It was a loss leader.

It wasn't until I licensed my brand to over 80 or 90 product .

That's when I made the money.

So he licenses to bed linens and chocolates and eyewear and the Lincoln Continental that he designed and anything else and he was the first successful American designer to do that.

>> I think it's important to know for you know, kids who might not know who Bill Blass is but I'm sure we've all heard of Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren and these names now that are just kind infamous and Blast was the first designer to really do that to to pull his name off of just clothes and brand himself not only his company but his persona as like you were saying a designer who needs to come out of the back room and and be known and the reason that he had such a strong client base was because he had such a strong public persona and it just kind of an image to his name.

>> His his image was was the the key to luxury and you know, high class and so that's what caused people to want to buy more of Bill's clothes was because of that.

>> Yeah, I love the the reference to his being able to provide women with a no fuss West American style.

>> Yeah.

well he always said that he didn't want women to just sit in front of a mirror and fuss over themselves and be a clotheshorse just spending all this money on things he wanted people to put on clothes and get on with their life and I think that that's a very Midwestern way to think about fashion.

You know, we can still be stylish.

We still care about esthetics and things but at the end of the day where people that need to get stuff done and he design for women to in a time when women are going to work so much more and you would mention men's wear to bringing those men's wear influences to women's fashion.

That's why he was really, really famous in the eighties and nineties as women were entering the workforce more than ever.

>> That was his key woman who he designed for and so we have the past which we are celebrating presently over a hundred days and then with an eye to the future there is a legacy component to all of this which is going along and that's a pay it forward from the event committee and many others.

>> Kathy , tell me what's going on over there.

Yeah, so we didn't really have in mind when we started this that we would do a legacy project but frankly we've been really good.

Theresa Walker is our researcher and she's been really good at tracking down Bill's niece.

His nephew, his his personal assistant, his archivist, his butler Al McGlowan, Darren Winston, a friend.

So all of these people have been sending us items while they've also been introduced us to Bill.

We're interviewing them and archiving it.

But so now we have all of these items that were Bill Blass owned items, hundreds of them we just logged in two hundred and seventy three from the butler the other day.

So it's clear to us that his legacy lives on here in his hometown.

>> So which at the Allen County Public Library, a genealogy center, they've been great about digitizing everything.

So there will be a Bill Blass digital archive of all of the interviews, of all of the television interviews, of all of the documentaries that we find of all of the written information.

So there'll be a digitized archive at the on County Public Library which we are very proud of .

We're going to partner with Bill Blass Ltd to make sure what they have gets archived in the the historic archive that we're creating.

>> But we also have things that are visually exciting.

I mean it's his it's his life's design.

So we're going to have a trunk show traveling museum.

I'm not exactly sure what we'll put in it or where it will go but we want to be sure we the things that have been donated aren't just tucked away in museum store rooms but that we have it out so that every generation of person that is in Fort Wayne that comes through Fort Wayne that lives in Fort Wayne knows this man existed and that we're very proud of him.

So there'll be a Bill Blass museum kind of like the aviation museum at the airport that's small in stature but it's tucked away somewhere probably in trunks that we move around.

>> So we'll be very sure to archive everything that we're doing and also being able to reach out to Indiana University which I understand has also become a repository for for some of the designers.

>> Clothing was just there.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

How overwhelming was that trip?

You know, they have a really great collection there but they were kind of the first people to do a retrospective on Bill's work in 2002.

They did a show called Bill Blastin American Designer which was right before he passed away.

And the funny story goes that when Bill came down to IU and saw the pieces that they were planning to put in the show, he said Oh no, no, those aren't good enough.

And so he went out to all of his ladies.

He's dressed for many years very famous people and ask them to send you all their clothes to make this show really spectacular.

>> And so they they did the first iteration of the show but they've been kind enough to loan a lot of those pieces to arm them to to kind of bring him back to life again for this the show it's so let's be sure we share again the headlines on that show is there are several shows going on simultaneously.

So those are some of the headlines for three museums, fourteen branches of the library, the lake community, Indiana University, the New York archives, lots of stuff happening within city proper.

>> And to keep ensuring that your scorecard is up to date, be sure to head over to the Facebook page for the Bill Blass centennial the one hundred day experience you can type that information in on your Facebook homepage or quick click the QR code .

>> You can do it and you knew we put that back up for you.

>> So that's available and of course information will be available at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art and the History Center and the Veterans Memorial Shrine.

It's so much more it is going to be one of the most exciting things of summer.

And as you say, Kathy , lots of reasons for people to get out and get back together and what a wonderful rallying point.

>> Go ahead.

I mentioned two things very, very South Side High School jumped on board in a big way with their teachers and their students to honor Bill's life and tell their stories.

And also Nelson Peters has been great.

The county there's now going to be a Bill Blass bridge on the road and I'd like to do a shout out to both South Side and Nelson Peters in the county for doing Bill Blass Bridge and we were all giving a shout out to as well to you both Cathy Carrier the event lead and organizer for All Things Bill Blass and Jelly Gilly who is associate curator of exhibitions at the Fort a Museum of Art and for all of us with prime time I'm saying thank you for watching next week our part two of Bill Blass as we converse with producer Rick Beyer about his role with the Ghost Army.

We'll see you next week.

Seven thirty here on PBS Fort Wayne