Helen Farrell, Retailer and Educator, 86
Helen Farrell, founder of Los Angeles–based design school Fashion Careers International, died on July 27 after battling several illnesses. She was 86.
A native of Paris, Farrell arrived in New York in 1947.
Her fashion career began in 1963, when she opened what would be the first of many retail boutiques in New York, California, Las Vegas and Aruba, according to her son, Joe Farrell, who serves as fashion merchandising chair at FCI. Her first boutique, called Bagatelle, was a disaster, her son recalled. The Brooklyn, N.Y., store carried the wrong merchandise at the wrong price point. But she learned her lesson, and her second store, Caryatid, opened in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1967 and was much more successful, with new merchandise from labels such as Crazy Horse, Happy Legs and Ellen Tracy, her son said. Other stores soon followed.
The peripatetic Farrell moved from New York to Aruba to Burbank, Calif., to Las Vegas to Beverly Hills to San Diego—opening retail stores at every stop, according to her son. In 1993, she retired—but not for long. She opened Fashion Careers U.S.A., a fashion school in San Diego, in 1998. Farrell, her family and the school relocated to the Los Angeles area in 1999, and the school was renamed Fashion Careers International. Today located in downtown Los Angeles, FCI specializes in short-term studies in fashion design and merchandising.
“Helen has left a legacy to future fashion entrepreneurs,” her son said.
“Countless FCI students who [she] mentored will miss her dearly.”
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations in Helen Farrell’s name be made to the American Stroke Association. —Alison A. Nieder
