His laid-back style and namesake jeans made him a touchstone of 1960s fashion, drawing celebrities and tourists alike to his stores.<\/b>
\nFred Segal, whose clothing boutiques became an emblem of Los Angeles cool by selling form-fitting jeans and chambray shirts to the likes of Bob Dylan, Farah Fawcett and the Beatles, died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Thursday. He was 87. The cause was complications of a stroke, according to a spokeswoman for the family. Mr. Segal became one of the West Coast\u2019s best-known designers and retailers in the 1960s and helped shape the image of Southern California fashion as breezy, sexy and relaxed. His namesake ivy-covered store became a hangout for fashionistas, Hollywood actors and big-name artists and musicians. For tourists, it often figured into sightseeing itineraries right alongside Grauman\u2019s Chinese Theater and the Hollywood sign. Mr. Segal opened his first store in 1960, a 700-square-foot space on Santa Monica Boulevard that sold denim jeans, chambray shirts and pants, velvets and flannels, according to the company\u2019s website. In 1961, he and Ron Herman, his nephew, opened a shop half as large on Melrose Avenue that carried only jeans, which they sold for $19.95 a pair \u2014 a price that was practically unheard-of at the time, when men still wore suits and denim pants typically sold for $3 a pair. \u201cMy concept was that people wanted to be comfortable, casual and sexy, so I thought it would work and obviously it did work,\u201d Mr. Segal said in an interview with Haute Living magazine in 2012. People flocked to the store to buy the jeans, driven in no small part by celebrities like Jay Sebring, the hairdresser who was the inspiration for Warren Beatty\u2019s character in \u201cShampoo\u201d and who wore tight, flare-bottomed jeans and a fitted shirt that he had purchased at Mr. Segal\u2019s store. Mr. Segal\u2019s customers soon included the Beatles, Elvis Presley and Diana Ross as well as members of the Jackson Five and Jefferson Airplane. \u201cWhen I first came to L.A. in the late \u201970s, there were two things everyone talked about: Gucci bags and Fred Segal,\u201d the writer Pleasant Gehman told The New York Times in 2001. His designs were notable for fits that were unusual for the time. Pants were cut for men so they would fall low on the hips, for instance, and the stores also sold tightfitting French T-shirts and Danskin leotards. In addition to his designs, Mr. Segal was among a small group of retailers at the time \u2014 among them Tommy Perse, Linda Dresner and Joan Weinstein \u2014 who pioneered the concept of working closely with designers and selling their clothes in their stores, said Ikram Goldman, the owner of the Chicago boutique Ikram. \u201cThey had an exquisite eye,\u201d she said. \u201cThose are the people that discovered talent and brought it to light in a way that \u2014 before Instagram, before social media, before the news hit you \u2014 introduced collections that you hadn\u2019t seen before.\u201d In 2006, a New York Times reporter described Mr. Segal as \u201cthe outfitter of those Hollywood fantasies, selling uniforms of expensive shirts and impossibly overthought bluejeans and kitten heels to the city\u2019s well-to-do inhabitants and celebrities.\u201d Frederick Mandel Segal was born on Aug.16,1933, in Chicago. His parents, David and Helen Segal, worked multiple jobs, and Mr. Segal grew up poor, according to the family\u2019s spokeswoman. Mr. Segal never went to school for fashion. He worked as a traveling shoe salesman and shined shoes in Venice Beach \u2014 two jobs that let him observe people and helped him cultivate a sense for what buyers wanted. Tired of traveling, he decided to open up his first store in 1960. Mr. Segal credited his early success to his ability to be honest with customers. \u201cI learned at a very young age that the area of no competition is in integrity,\u201d Mr. Segal told Haute Living. \u201cWhen I was selling in my store to my customers and they came in wanting to buy this or that, if they put an outfit on and they asked me for my advice part of the time I\u2019d say, \u2018Take that off don\u2019t even buy that, that would be ridiculous, you don\u2019t even look good in that.\u2019 That\u2019s really deep honesty. You don\u2019t find that in business you know?\u201d Fred Segal stores opened in Taiwan and in Bern, the Swiss capital. In 2015, the brand opened a store in Tokyo that also included an on-site food truck that sold Mexican street corn, shrimp on a roll and hot dogs paired with Coca-Cola and Corona. The name Fred Segal became so well known that it was casually referenced in movies like \u201cClueless\u201d and \u201cLegally Blonde.\u201d Mr. Segal is survived by his wife, Tina; five children, Michael, Judy, Sharon, Nina and Annie; 10 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n