Russell Patterson, the illustrator, cartoonist and designer whose slick, sophisticated drawings created many of the fashions of the flapper and collegiate eras of the 1920's, was born in Omaha on Dec. 26, 1894, the son of a Scottish railroad lawyer. His family moved to Newfoundland and then to Montreal, where his father ran a hotel. He graduated from McGill University, where he studied architecture, while secretly wanting to be an artist.

His first job before moving to Chicago was drawing cartoons for The Montreal Weekly Standard. He then went to the Montréal daily La Patrie, where he created his first comic strip, "Pierre et Pierrette." After being turned down by the Canadian army, he went to study at the Chicago Art Institute. From 1920 to 1925, Patterson lived in Paris, France, where he studied under Claude Monet and painted oils.

Before the era of commercial photography, movies and television, the art of the illustrator reached its creative peak, and among those at that peak was Mr. Patterson.

He “started” the flapper, he once told an interviewer, in Chicago around 1926. For no reason other than that he had read F. Scott Fitzgerald and that as an illustrator, he wanted to create a different look from the somewhat bovine types who were models of beauty at the time. The result was the Patterson Girl, the longlegged sophisticate with patent leather hair.

He took her to New York where she became the “look” of the 1920's as surely as the Gibson Girl had been the “look” of the 1890's. Although never a real fashion designer, Mr. Patterson did set styles. He put his women in open galoshes and draped raccoon coats on their companions: he adopted the cloche hat, shoes with bows and silky dresses that clung to the hips.

Patterson Girls made up their eyes big and round, stood limply around rooms or draped themselves atop furniture that today we would call art deco, and they boldly smoked cigarettes in public.

He turned this liberated flapper into an extremely well-endowed, dumb blonde. By the mid 1930's, “Mamie” had become the ultimate sex object, hardly sophisticated or clever, but a stereotype much copied years later by Hollywood filmmakers.

A swift and prolific artist, Mr. Patterson also designed sets and costumes for Fox and Paramount Pictures. His film credits include “The Gang's All Here,” 1931, “Hold Your Horses,” 1933, and “Fools Rush In,” 1934. He designed the clothes Shirley Temple wore in her first picture, “Baby Take a Bow.”

He also did sets and costumes for Florenz Ziegfeld's “Follies” and George White's “Scandals.” He designed theaters, hotel lobbies, train car interiors, Macy's display windows at Christmas time, restaurants and nightclubs—the Riobamba, the Harwyn Club, Maurice's, the French Casino and the Monte Carlo, all since gone from the New York scene.

During World War II, he designed the WAC uniform. With the advent of plastics, he created the see-through umbrella and raincoat. He brought wrought iron furniture into the house, used sheets and felt as draperies and bedspreads.

In 1931, he was the first to draw women in sleek evening pajamas, and, he explained: “The emancipation of woman is at hand. In a year, she will free herself of skirts and probably never come back to them.”

As magazine sophistication grew, the photographer often replaced the illustrator, so, in 1951, Mr. Patterson created a syndicated comic strip about a stylish model he called "Mamie" for United Feature Syndicate. The strip was discontinued in 1956.

In 1972, he retired to the New Jersey resort island, Brigantine, where he remained active designing and painting. In 1974, he won an Elzie Segar Award.

Russell Patterson died of heart failure on a Thursday night in Atlantic City Hospital. He was 82 years old. He was survived by his wife, Ruth Cleary, a musician and songwriter, a daughter, Russelle, and five grandchildren.

Majority Biography Copyright (C) John T. McQuiston March 19, 1977 Page 16 The New York Times

Partial Biography Copyright (C) Lambiek.net

Social/Sharing