Susan Posen, an arts-loving corporate lawyer who switched gears in midlife to help her fashion designer son Zac build his namesake company, died Thursday at the age of 80.
Following a three-year battle, she died of bladder cancer at home in Bucks County, Pa., “surrounded by her family with a Mona Lisa smile on her face,” according to Zac Posen, Gap Inc.’s executive vice president and creative director.
A private family memorial is being planned.
Zac Posen’s ascent in the fashion sphere was meteoric as a 21-year-old, thanks in part to the bootstrapping efforts that he made with his mother and sister Alexandra, who joined forces to launch the business from the family’s SoHo loft in Manhattan. With her artist husband Stephen of 60-plus years, Susan Posen created an arts-centric and bohemian environment for their family to embrace creativity, playfulness and a do-it-ness to realize their ideas.
Zac Posen said Sunday, “Working with my mother and my sister is something that is so rare and so special. That kind of family dynamic is also so much a part of the fashion industry.”
A young Zac Posen with his mother Susan.
Courtesy Photo
Born in Manhattan, the former Susan Orzack’s family later moved to New Jersey, but she would take the bus into New York City to perform with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. Her father owned a liquor store near the Port Authority. After graduating from high school in New Jersey, she earned a bachelor of arts degree from Sarah Lawrence.
As an exchange student studying art history in Rome, she visited Florence and met her future husband, Stephen, who was a Fulbright scholar from Yale University’s art school. He proposed six weeks later. As newlyweds, they first lived in a loft on Avenue B, and later moved to West 16th Street. In 1972, they settled into the SoHo loft.
Like her designer son, who has held various roles in the fashion industry, Susan Posen’s career was multifaceted. An early job with a publisher that worked with Helen Gurley Brown involved helping launch the public relations campaign for Jacqueline Susann’s “Valley of the Dolls.” She also sewed the pieces of cloth that her husband incorporated into his paintings. At one point she had a craft belt business with the artist Chuck Close’s wife, Leslie. The duo sold their belts to Betsey Johnson’s first store Betsey Bunky Nini.
In a joint call with her father and brother on Sunday, Alexandra Posen said her mother’s a-ha moment occurred in a Houston Street playground. “She said that she was sitting there when I was about 3 years old, talking about tuna fish salad recipes. And she just thought, ‘I’ve got to go to law school.’”
So she did and earned a degree from Brooklyn Law School, where she excelled and headed up the Brooklyn Law Review as managing editor. From 1978 to 2000, she worked at Stroock & Stroock and Lavan LLP as an M&A lawyer. In the early 1980s, she helped the Little Red School House, where her son, who had dyslexia and ADD, was enrolled, build its Learning Lab program to help children with learning disabilities. The enterprising Posen also had a stint at Cablevision, which was then a startup. She later returned to the law firm to make partner. Championing women in the workforce and balancing the challenges of work and motherhood were priorities for her. Susan Posen mentored numerous young women about entrepreneurialism for many years.
After leaving corporate law, Susan Posen started Diva Capital to invest in women-owned and women-led companies, which was too ahead of its time to get off the ground, her son said. After he returned from studying at Central Saint Martins in London, he teamed with his mother and sister to hatch the company on the family bed in his parents’ loft.
Stephen Posen, whose art studio took up half of the loft’s space, said, “I set up a big cutting table in the living room and pushed all the furniture to a separate area of the loft near my studio, which I maintained. And then they began to show for [a buying appointment] Henri Bendel for their first collection.”
Bendel’s buyers were in for a performance, where they were greeted with music as models of all sizes were popping out of different corners of the loft. Alexandra Posen, who served as creative director of the company for eight years, said, “That was the spirit that we started with. That was really Zac’s brilliance.”
Bloomingdale’s and Maria Louise Poumalliou were early supporters. With no outside investment, the House of Z was based in the family’s Spring Street loft for the first 18 months. Zac Posen said, “She was very courageous. Another pioneering thing she did was to very smartly negotiate with Barneys, Bloomingdale’s and other stores that they would purchase orders 50 percent upfront. That allowed our company to exist and to buy fabrics and do production at that time.”
Their all-in approach in the early years led to Susan Posen driving a truck around the Garment District and delivering products to retailers. “Out of necessity, we figured out sponsorship. [Through that] she raised money that primarily underwrote our fashion shows, which was not the norm, or to that scale at that time,” Zac Posen said. “From a corporate relations standpoint, that really helped direct corporations to working with fashion and IMG.”
Susan Posen also helped her son navigate all of the peaks and valleys that many young designers face. At his first show in 2002, the supermodel Naomi Campbell’s presence on the runway turned up the spotlight on the designer. Over time, he developed a strong celebrity following that also includes longtime friends like Katie Holmes, Lola Schnabel and Clare Danes. Highlighting the rapid growth, Alexandra Jacobs said the company had to move to a larger space on Laight Street and hired employees.
Susan and Stephen Posen cultivated a highly creative and bohemian environment for their children in the art-adorned home with reams of books and films. Their travels involved visits to art museums and churches. Decades before selfie taking became a sport of sorts, the Posens’ excursions were photographed and videotaped. Traveling as a family made her children citizens of the world, Susan Posen once explained to FLATT magazine.They trekked through the Sicilian catacombs and caves in Dordogne to examine 30,000-year-old art. Referring to the latter, Susan Posen told FLATT, “That put things in perspective.” (And much of the family’s dinner table conversations were reportedly made up of intellectual evaluation and deconstruction.)
Consumers got a closer glimpse of the family’s dynamics in the 2017 documentary the “House of Z,” which chronicled the fame and pitfalls that the fashion designer has faced. Like many of his peers, the 2008 recession saddled Zac Posen with debt, and those rocky times also created tension with his mother. Before its release, Posen told WWD the film was meant to show what it takes to survive, prevail and grow.
Recalling the 2007 push for the Design Piracy Prohibition Act, an effort to protect designers from widespread copying and to recognize fashion as creative work worthy of legal protection, the CFDA’s president and chief executive officer Steven Kolb, said, “Zac Posen was advocating for the CFDA and the industry, and his mother, Susan Posen, was there alongside him. She was a lawyer, but more than that, a constant and steady presence, supporting not just her son, but the larger cause of protecting American design and the ownership of creativity.”
Before stepping down from the House of Z, Susan Posen told WWD how she had had “the privilege to work — both within the company and in the larger fashion arena — with an amazing group of people.” Isabella Blow, André Leon Talley, Campbell and Scoop’s Stefani Greenfield were part of her inner circle. Posen continued as chair of the company’s board. Prior to her departure, sources said that Ron Burkle’s The Yucaipa Cos. was getting frustrated with the lack of return on its Zac Posen investment and had sought a change in leadership.
For 15 years, Burkle held a stake in the company. In 2004, while at the height of his fame in the fashion industry, the now disgraced Sean John founder Sean Combs formed a joint venture with Zac Posen’s then three-year-old company. His mother was at the helm, when the designer broadened his reach beyond ballgowns and exquisitely draped styles to launch a more affordable assortment with Target.
In November 2019, Zac Posen shuttered his business, which was a board-approved decision that he described at that time as “horrible, pretty intense and surreal.” At that time, Posen was designing 14 collections each year, and serving as creative director of Brooks Brothers. He also had recently redesigned the uniforms for Delta Airlines.
Describing Susan Posen as “a real Mama Bear, who was so protective and proud of Zac and all his endeavors,” Fern Mallis recalled how she was involved when he first showed in Bryant Park, and when Mallis introduced the designer to the diamond company Blue Nile for a licensing deal. Mallis said, “She was tough, but fair, and we always connected well.”
She is survived by her husband, daughter and son, as well as his partner Harrison Ball, grandchildren Cyrus and Celeste Anderson and sister Karen Orzack Moore. In keeping with Posen’s wishes, the donations can be made in her memory to the ACLU or Planned Parenthood.
Alexandra Posen said, “She liked to think of herself as the wind behind the sails for art, for artistic people, for the creativity in the family and for young entrepreneurs. She was an incredibly generous spirit and a force of nature.”
