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O B I T U A R Y
Joseph Picone Dies at 83; A Founder of
Evan-Picone Clothing
By Constance L. Hays
Joseph Picone, a tailor who specialized in men's trousers until a woman's skirt crossed the threshold of his tiny shop, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 83.
In 1949, Mr. Picone was working out of a storefront on Fifth Avenue near 46th Street when a client sent his son over with a business proposition one afternoon. The son, Charles Evans, had designed a simple skirt with a fly front that he thought would find a market among fashion-conscious women. He had spent months looking for someone who could create a sample, something he could take around to stores to sell.
"I brought him this skirt and I said, `Can you make it?' " Mr. Evans recalled yesterday. Mr. Picone said yes. Mr. Evans was delighted, but he had another question. "I asked him when I could come back and take a look at it," he said, "and he said, `In the morning, but not before 7.' "
The two formed a company, Evan- Picone, which produced thousands of skirts and eventually women's slacks as well. They were going to name it Evans-Picone, but at the last minute decided to drop the "s," reasoning that Evan-Picone sounded more like somebody's name. They also dropped the final syllable of Mr. Picone's name, which was pronounced in proper Italian style as "pi-KOH-nay."
Mr. Picone was an early pioneer of assembly-line garment manufacturing, assigning one worker to sew hems, another to add buttons and another to sew pocket darts, which were a company innovation that kept pocket seams from tearing. The Evan-Picone brand was a success almost immediately, and it dominated the sportswear business even after the company was sold to Revlon in 1962.
The company was sold because Mr. Evans wanted a change, he said. He went into the real estate business. Mr. Picone remained and bought the company back in 1966. He sold it again to Palm Beach Inc., where, in 1981, Evan-Picone began its first advertising campaign to presell its clothes to working women, who Mr. Picone thought were too busy to go through the racks looking for the right things to wear.
He retired in 1983 as chairman and chief executive of Evan-Picone, now part of the Jones Apparel Group, but before long he was back in action, introducing the MaxMara line, founded by his friend Achille Maramotti, to stores in the United States. From 1987 to 1992, Mr. Picone was chairman and chief executive of MaxMara USA, where he remained on the board for several years after his retirement.
Mr. Picone, a native of Castronovo, Sicily, entered the garment business when he was 7, apprenticed to a local tailor. He left Italy in 1936, when he was 18, and within three years of arriving in the United States had opened his own business making men's trousers. He closed the shop in 1942, when he joined the Army, but he was back in business after World War II, stitching up slacks on his machine at his shop, MPA Tailors, which soon became a supplier of pants for Brooks Brothers.
He never forgot that early training and could be a tough taskmaster when it came to the garments bearing the Evan-Picone name. "He was a difficult boss," Mr. Evans recalled, "but an honest, good friend and in the 15 years we were in business together, we never had one cross word."
He was soft-spoken, always impeccably dressed and, years after leaving his native land, retained his Italian accent. He received several awards from the Italian government and the Vatican and sponsored the 1967 Masquerade Ball in Venice to benefit artisans there.
He is survived by his wife, Fannie, of Manhattan; a daughter, Sarina, of Manhattan, and a son, Joseph, of Bergamo, Italy; two brothers, Vincent, of Orlando, Fla., and Anthony, of Ridgefield, N.J.; and two sisters, Mary Celauro and Marianna Pisano, also of Orlando.
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