Designer specialized in flamboyant fashions
From her headquarters on Potrero Hill, Jessica McClintock oversaw a clothing empire that, at its height, operated dozens of stores across the country and outfitted women in dresses, handbags, watches, eyeglasses and a perfume that hinted of jasmine.
The influential designer died in her sleep on Feb. 16, smack in the middle of what her website declared to be the month of romance, “when most weddings are planned.” McClintock was 90.
McClintock sold fantasy as much as she sold finery. Her silky, satiny creations cost three figures, not four or five. In later years they were sold at Marshall’s, not Saks, and at Nordstrom Rack, not Nordstrom. But at the height of her empire, in the 1970s and 1980s, she adorned scores of women in calico, jute and lace for proms, graduations and the wedding altar.
One of them was Hillary Rodham, who wore a frilled, longsleeved McClintock gown in 1975 when she married her law school sweetheart, Bill Clinton.
The Jessica McClintock look was called a prairie girl aesthetic and it was very, very big until, in the way of all fashion, it wasn’t.
Her success was a mix of inspiration and a nearconsuming work ethic.
“Time is everything,” she liked to say. “Competition is fierce. Decisions have to be made quickly.”
McClintock was born Jessica Gagnon on June 19, 1930. The daughter of a shoe salesman and a beautician, Gagnon was a native of Presque Isle, Maine, who picked up dressmaking skills from her grandmother and never formally studied design. She graduated from San Jose State University and, in the 1960s, taught young students at Nimitz Elementary School in Sunnyvale. Her first husband, Al Staples, died in 1963. She and her second husband, Fred McClintock, a commercial airline pilot she once described as “the love of my life,” divorced in 1967.
Jessica McClintock’s reinvention as a style maven began a couple years later. She recalled selling dresses barefoot in Berkeley in 1969. A year later, she invested $5,000 in a friend’s San Francisco dress store,
called Gunne Sax, and in a few years her fashions were being sold around the world. She opened her first store in San Francisco in 1981. Her empire was said to do $100 million in annual sales.
McClintock not only worked long hours but demanded the same of her colleagues. Her half brother and company vice president, Jack Herich, thought moving to California in the 1960s to work for McClintock would lead to an easy life.
“I thought I was going to be a beach bum,” he said in 2011. “I’ve been to the beach once in 40 years.”
McClintock’s halfcentury career was not without controversy. Two decades ago, a Mis
sion District garment shop that sewed her clothes was found to have violated labor standards and was liable for unpaid wages. She and others paid $120,000 to settle the case.
After her stores closed, McClintock’s fashions and other products were licensed and continued to be sold at stores without valet parking. She was still at work in her 80s, overseeing licensing deals and marketing strategies. A Chronicle reporter asked her in 2011 whether it was OK to sell strapless, midthigh dresses to young girls.
“Are you kidding?” McClintock said. “With everything in the world today? Everything is so seductive! Sure, I make the dresses short. But
the girls can wear leggings.”
McClintock’s company website, which survives her, described the domain as an “enchanted life style brand ... always in touch with what young women want.”
In 2018, McClintock and her son founded the Scott and Jessica McClintock Foundation to support environmental causes, particularly those relating to elephants, rhinoceroses and mountain lions.
She is survived by her son, Scott. A memorial celebration will be held in San Francisco at a later date.