Stephen Sprouse, the American fashion designer and artist who has been credited with pioneering the 1980s mix of uptown sophistication in clothing with a downtown punk and pop sensibility, died on Friday in New York. He was 50.
The cause was heart failure, according to his mother, though Sprouse had been diagnosed with lung cancer about a year ago, a condition he kept private while continuing to work.
“Stephen's style was a sort of punk couture,” said Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barneys New York. “Europe had Jean-Paul Gaultier, but American fashion had no one like that until Stephen exploded on the scene in a blaze of pop art fluorescence. He opened his store in SoHo when it was considered a dangerous, edgy place. As people uptown began to discover Stephen, they discovered SoHo and it became a fashion destination.”
His early statement as a designer came in a declaration of new clothes that were perfect for a rock star with a secret penchant for good schools and Park Avenue friends. There were Day-Glo colors, all-black palettes, mirrored sequins, high-tech fabrics and Velcro attachments long before Velcro was a discount fixative, always rendered with the finest tailoring. His hand-painted silk tunics with long skirts covered in transparent sequins sold then for $1000.
Ohio-born, Indiana-raised Sprouse started designing clothes when he was 9. “My father, who was in the Air Force, thought my designing was great,” Sprouse said in a 1983 interview with The New York Times. “When I was 12 he took me to New York to meet Bill Blass, Geoffrey Beene and Norman Norell. Blass said I could work for him when I got older.”
By the time he was 14, Sprouse was sketching for Blass in the summer. At 18, he attended the Rhode Island School of Design, but stayed for three months before a friend introduced him to Halston. After three years of working for the designer, Sprouse left New York, but returned in 1974 to photograph rock groups. In 1975, he started designing clothes for Debbie Harry of the rock group Blondie.
With a loan from his family, Sprouse opened his business in 1983. Most recently, in addition to creating signature graffiti bags for Louis Vuitton, as well as projects for Diesel jeans and fabric for Knoll International, Sprouse was devoting his time to painting. He also was the fashion consultant for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland.