James Dennis “Jeigh” Singleton Jr., who led Washington University’s fashion design program for 25 years, was known for his impeccable taste and strong opinions.
His alumni joked that they would compose a book of “Jeigh-isms” because his critical aphorisms were always humorous, blunt and unpredictable.
Professor Singleton turned 70 on Saturday and died Sunday (Jan. 11, 2015) in Plaquemine, La., after complications from a years-long battle with cancer, his family said.
He began teaching at Washington University in 1972, and in 1987 was named director of fashion design in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. He retired in 2012 and was honored with a living legacy award by the design program. He received the Distinguished Faculty Award in 1996 and numerous honors along the way, including distinctions from Craft Alliance, St. Louis Fashion Week and the Sheer Elegance Award from Mathews-Dickey Boys & Girls Club.
Professor Singleton was once described as “without a doubt, the most famous fashion designer ever to come out of Plaquemine, La.” — a title that filled him with great amusement.
His sister Cheryl Piper, of Plaquemine, said that Professor Singleton was destined to work in fashion. He started sewing outfits for her and her mother in high school. When he attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to study textiles and design, Professor Singleton made everything in his sister’s size so she was obligated to come model at all of his shows. He later designed her wedding dress.
Professor Singleton graduated from Tuskegee in 1966 and earned a master’s degree from Kansas State University in 1970.
Professor Singleton preferred the subdued aesthetic of his favorite designers Bill Blass and Geoffrey Beene. He infamously despised denim worn for anything but hard labor, but his insights were generally full of common sense.
“The stuff has to sell. Period,” Professor Singleton said of clothing design in an interview with the Post-Dispatch in 1992. “A sales force ... doesn’t want to hear about your self-exploration. They want to know if it is cute and will it sell.”
Designer Todd Thomas, who led the fashion team for the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show for more than a decade and now teaches at Parsons the New School for Design in New York, remembers Professor Singleton when they coordinated fashion shows together in a space on Washington Avenue in St. Louis.
Professor Singleton’s clothing was “very elegant and rather classic but with hints of different cultural references,” Thomas said, “a lot like Jeigh, really, an extension of what I have as a picture in my mind of him.”
Thomas suspects that Professor Singleton went into teaching because he knew he’d have more influence on the world of fashion through academia. Now, he’s touched legions of designers, pattern makers, media professionals, textile makers and ateliers.
When asked in the 1992 Post-Dispatch story how he made it into fashion, Professor Singleton said he had actually dreamed of being an architect but didn’t know where to start, so he sketched.
“I was drawn to art and found that I had a knack for drawing clothes with people in them,” he said. “People in my classes said they would have died from the buildings I would have designed, but nobody has ever died from a bad dress.”
Flags at the university will fly at half-staff for three days in his honor.
Services will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday at Plymouth Rock Baptist Church in Plaquemine, La.
Survivors include his sister and her children, Kimberly Piper-Butler and Jeremy Jeigh Piper.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in Singleton’s honor to the American Cancer Society.
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