DIED. BILL BLASS, 79, the urbane couturier who defined American style by marrying comfort with elegance; of throat cancer; in New Preston, Conn. Among his signatures were striped sailor T shirts in fine fabrics and cashmere sweaters atop taffeta skirts as alternatives to evening dresses. The son of a hardware-store owner from Fort Wayne, Ind., Blass watched Carole Lombard movies and sketched New York City cocktail parties as a boy; later, he dressed–and befriended–such clients from the social elite as Nancy Reagan and Pamela Harriman.
RESIGNED. S. VANCE WILKINS JR., 65, as the first G.O.P. speaker of the Virginia house; in Richmond; under growing pressure from fellow Republicans. Wilkins, accused of groping two women, denied making unwanted advances but said, “I don’t blame anyone for my troubles. Most of them I brought on myself.”
DIED. JOHN GOTTI, 61, swaggering celebrity gangster known as the Dapper Don, the ruthless yet always impeccably groomed boss of the Gambino crime family; of throat cancer; in the federal prison hospital in Springfield, Mo. He had been serving a life sentence on murder and racketeering charges. The former juvenile delinquent from the South Bronx relished the spotlight, favoring $2,000 suits and tony restaurants, smirking throughout his four trials and winning populist-hero status in the tabloids. Although he had always claimed to be a $100,000- a-year plumbing salesman from Ozone Park, N.Y., Gotti was convicted in 1992 with the help of testimony from mob turncoat Sammy Gravano.
DIED. HOLLY SOLOMON, 68, influential, experimental art dealer and fashionista who championed unknown artists like Robert Kushner and helped make New York City’s Soho neighborhood into a center for new art in the 1970s; of complications from pneumonia after battling cancer; in New York City. Known as the Pop Princess for her admiration of Pop Art, she was the subject of famous portraits by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, below.
DIED. STANLEY LLOYD GREIGG, 71, former Iowa Congressman who filed the criminal complaint that sparked the Watergate investigation; of a heart attack; in Roanoke, Va. As then deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Greigg was called in by Washington police on June 17, 1972, to view a lineup of the five Watergate burglars.
DIED. R.W.B. LEWIS, 84, Pulitzer-prizewinning author (for 1975’s Edith Wharton: A Biography) and longtime Yale scholar who helped pioneer the field of American Studies; of cancer; in Bethany, Conn. A professor of English and American studies for 29 years, Lewis published his last work, a biography of Dante, to critical acclaim last year.
DIED. SIGNE HASSO, 91, Swedish-born stage and film star of the ’40s and ’50s, best known for her role in George Cukor’s A Double Life, in which she played the wife of an actor (Ronald Colman) obsessed with his role as Othello; in Los Angeles.
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