Born Arnold Isaacs in Montreal (he deliberately reversed his name to sound Italian), the son of a furrier began his career at the renowned Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne college in Paris. Upon his graduation, he came to New York to work with Charles James before striking out on his own.

“He was the first designer who burst onto the scene by going from nothing to being a star in the 1950s,” recalled former CFDA President Stan Herman. “It was just unheard of then. He was doing a fashion show at the Plaza hotel and all of a sudden, everybody deified him.

“He had just left Charles James, and he had a vision,” Herman added. “He was one of the authentic designers who broke barriers. He became a fashion star long before that happened in America.”

Scaasi was known for his impeccably tailored suits and glamorous eveningwear and cocktail dresses trimmed with feathers, fur, sequins, or fine embroidery—and an equally exuberant personality to boot. In addition to Mamie Eisenhower and Laura Bush, he has dressed Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton, as well as Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, Lauren Bacall, Brooke Astor, Diahann Carroll, Catherine Deneuve, Arlene Francis, and Mary Tyler Moore.

In 1968, he caught the eye of a worldwide audience when Barbra Streisand wore his sheer overblouse and pants ensemble to collect her Academy Award for Funny Girl.

“Arnold made clothes for women and understood the power of celebrity  before the rest of the industry caught on,” said Steven Kolb, President and CEO of the CFDA. “He was a showman both in how he designed and with his way of life.  As a founding member of the CFDA, he helped define the purpose of the organization and never stopped sharing his opinions and ideas.”

In an excerpt from “IMPACT: 50 Years of The Council of Fashion Designers of America,”  he recalled the reactions of the industry under Eleanor Lambert when the increased prestige of New York as a style and fashion center led to a shift in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

“Everyone was kind of shocked [at the CFDA’s inception] because it was like stepping away from another group that was bigger [the Couture Group] and kind of like what the CFDA is today,” Scaasi said at the time. “A great many of the people in that group were people who went to Paris and bought from the couture to make line-for-line copies. . . . We were separating ourselves from the manufacturers, which was more of a reaction to Eleanor [Lambert] than to the Couture Group, because Eleanor was very much in the forefront of the other group until she formed the CFDA. The main thing was to take the creative designers away [from the manufacturers and the Couture Group] and ‘creative’ was a very important word at that moment. When she did that, it [the CFDA] really took off.”

Scaasi introduced the CFDA to Ernest Trova who created the trophy for the CFDA Fashion Awards. During his career, he was honored by the CFDA – in 1987 for “Creative Excellence” and in 1997 with a “Lifetime Achievement” award. Scaasi also received every other conceivable award in fashion. In 1959, he won the coveted Coty Award for, as Diana Vreeland wrote, “clothes that are feminine, glamorous and sensuous – made by a master and superb colorist!” He continued with the same fashion ethics throughout his life.

Scaasi was the subject of two books, “Scaasi: A Cut Above” (Rizzoli) and “Women I Have Dressed (and Undressed!)” (Scribner). Major retrospectives of his work have been mounted in venues across the world. In New York, the Historical Society Museum and The Museum at The Fashion Institute of Technology have shown extraordinary examples of his work to over 200,000 people.