Chicago manner designer Thierry Andre Roger, whose purchasers involved violinist Rachel Barton Pine, dies at 60

Soon after answering an mysterious quantity on his mobile, the challenge of a lifetime was laid out prior to Chicago manner designer Thierry Andre Roger.

Entire world-renowned violinist Rachel Barton Pine was on the line.

Just about every ball gown in her closet was dazzling, sophisticated, and, suddenly, ineffective.

For years, they’d flowed and swayed as she stood on stage with the help of a prosthetic leg and played her violin. 

But Pine experienced just experienced a healthcare setback that still left her unable to wander, at the very least for a when, and the flowing fabric that made the robes wonderful now posed a risk of acquiring caught under the scooter that carried her to heart stage.

Her frequent dressmaker couldn’t consider on these kinds of a short-recognize position.

It was an emergency. Could he aid? Mr. Roger claimed sure. 

His partner, Steven Martin-Roger, sat close by as the cellphone simply call performed out.

“It’s amusing since I don’t forget hearing parts of this, and then Thierry acquired off the cell phone and explained ‘You’re not heading to consider the discussion I just had with somebody.’ And I grabbed her CD off the bookshelf, because I’m a massive lover, and confirmed it to him and was like ‘Are you chatting about Rachel Barton Pine?’ … He did not know who she was,” Martin-Roger reported with a giggle.

Pine experienced been in an accident that severed her leg and mangled her remaining foot in 1995. The strap of her violin situation bought caught in the closing doorways of a Metra coach as it left a station in Winnetka and dragged her hundreds of toes. She’d get over adversity, yrs of surgical procedures, and won more acclaim as she performed the world more than, such as together with musical greats these kinds of as Jimmy Website page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin.

Her request was challenging: A slimmer style and design for a seated client that would still circulation with the athletic moves of a violinist’s arms and back, and pop from a length, as very well as search beautiful up close.

“It also experienced to drape in such a way that it continue to felt like the form of princess gown you want when you are carrying out a violin concerto, but with a nominal ample total of cloth that it was compatible with sitting down in the electric scooter,” she stated.

“He made a really ground breaking, two-piece costume that created it 10 periods simpler to get in than a normal a single-piece gown. But what was actually clever, genuinely genius, was he built it search as though it was a 1-piece costume,” Pine mentioned.

He built 4 this sort of garments for Pine and was beginning on another batch when a struggle with cancer claimed his existence.

Mr. Roger died Could 8 at his home in the Mayfair community on the Northwest Facet. He was 60. 

“It was so great that I got to know him and have him in my lifetime, even if it was far as well transient,” she reported.

Mr. Roger — pronounced Rozhay — and his husband saw Pine carry out in the attire many situations, which include very last summer months at Millennium Park.

“He was incredibly humble. He experienced plenty of clientele,” Mr. Roger’s partner mentioned.

“He labored really hard on social media and trying to keep up his site but hardly ever experienced to advertise. It was far more referrals, girls saying ‘Where did you get that gown?’ at functions, and he’d get a new client that way. He was quite steady,” Martin-Roger stated.

“He’d been approached by producers of ‘Project Runway’ about becoming on the exhibit as a contestant, but it was hardly ever a thing that was an curiosity to him. He did not want to be a major huge popular star. He required to make his one-of-a-sort pieces for his clientele and make them joyful, and have a excellent, content relationship.”

Mr. Roger was born in Switzerland to a German father and a French mom and break up time concerning the two nations around the world — including time finding out vogue in Paris — before relocating to the United States in 1990.

In advance of concentrating on private shoppers and doing work out of his home studio beneath his Thierry Roger Couturier label, he owned and operated a compact Roscoe Village boutique known as Collection Privée.

He was diagnosed with most cancers at the outset of the pandemic and — with the vogue small business on ice for a even though as people today stayed home — he targeted his time and attempts on generating countless numbers of masks with the reams of material he experienced in his basement.

Mr. Roger posted about the masks on Fb and would leave baggage of masks outside his front doorway for any person who despatched him a information expressing a want.

“And all people on employees in the chemo ward at Swedish Covenant Clinic, where by he obtained cure, obtained one of his masks,” his spouse mentioned. “It was a way to concentrate on other individuals and not on his own difficulties.”

“You would find them fashionable, but it is just for the reason that which is what he had on hand. He did not sew his label into it or everything,” his husband said.

The kindness was fulfilled with kindness, as people still left baskets of baked merchandise, bins of sanitary wipes and rolls of toilet paper on their front stoop. 

“He only started charging for the masks when he ran out of substance, and provides grew to become hard to get. But it wasn’t to make income,” he mentioned.

All the tools of his trade are staying donated to Columbia University Chicago. Family members and mates have commenced a scholarship fund in Mr. Roger’s title. Donations can be built at his web-site thierryroger.com.

Services have been held.