Babette ends 48-year run.
After 48 years, designer who championed pleated raincoats is retiring
After almost 50 years in business, San Francisco designer and retailer Babette Pinsky has shuttered her eponymous clothing line and stores. Pinsky, best known for her pleated raincoats and easy but elegant, European-style womenswear, liquidated her inventory and closed the business’ Oakland factory. The Union Square location’s final day of business, at 361 Sutter St., was Dec. 30.
The 74-year-old Pinsky and her husband and business partner, Steven Pinsky, knew that it was the right time to close when “a number of things came together,” including a succession plan for the business that never came to fruition.
“The brand is the brand,” Pinsky said via phone. “You build it over a long time — you don’t just want anyone taking it over.”
Pinsky said she made the decision to close the business and retire six months ago. “Retail is soft in general. I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs in 48 years, but this seemed like too much to go through again.” On the advice of their company president, the Pinskys have let employees mostly handle the closing, but Babette has been in touch with many longtime clients, who have written her emails expressing their appreciation for her durable, travel-friendly collections.
“Everyone has a 50-year-old raincoat,” she said, joking about the longevity of her pieces. “It’s been really satisfying to hear stories as we’ve sold off the archive. Women are asking ‘What am I going to wear now?’ ”
Pinsky, a native New Yorker, moved to San Francisco in the late 1960s after graduating from Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology. In 1968, she opened her first store, McDermott’s, in Sausalito and began selling her line of colorblock dresses, caftans, capes and coats inspired by fashion innovators Bonnie Cashin and Rudi Gernreich while using newish textiles like cottonpolyester blends.
In the early 1980s, Pinsky read an item in Women’s Wear Daily announcing that New
York designer Mary McFadden was planning to come out with a pleated raincoat and decided to beat her to the punch. The resulting architectural, trapeze-shape coat (with polyurethane
coating and a metallic sheen) became a bestselling staple for Pinsky. In a 2008 Chronicle story about Babette’s 40th anniversary in business and retrospective fashion show at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, staff writer Sylvia Rubin described the exacting pleating process:
“Not only are Babette’s signature pleats complicated and time-consuming to make, but some pieces also have up to three different kinds of pleating. It takes many nimble fingers to scrunch, press and fold, and several hulking industrial machines to heat press and bake the fabric. It takes a pair of long wooden boards and scored heavy cardboard — the same kinds of tools that have been used for creating pleated fabric since ancient Egyptian times.”
By 1991 Pinsky was making raincoats exclusively, and even had a section at New York’s famous Henri Bendel specialty store devoted to them. Eventually, the line would be carried in retailers in 27 states. But with the economy in the midst of a recession, she needed to diversfy and launched her pleated sportswear collection in response, ultizing new polyester microfiber fabrics. In 1995, the Pinskys bought the pleating factory in San Francisco they had used to produce the line.
“It became obvious we needed a factory,” she said. “I didn’t do pleats in the usual way — it is a craft and that has to be controlled in-house. It was the only solution to the problem.” A few years later, the company moved to a larger, 25,000square-foot factory in Oakland.
Babette employed about 100 people among the factory, administration and eight boutiques, Pinsky said. Besides Union Square, there were locations in New York City, Portland, Ore., and Chicago.
Steven Pinsky began working as Babette’s CEO in 1990. Babette Pinsky describes the arrangement as “a temporary thing that lasted 25 years. When I started, I did the whole thing myself but I only spent 1 percent of the time designing. Once I trusted his knowledge, then he became the business face.”
Following their retirement, Babette and Steven plan to travel. Babette Pinsky says she’s also excited to devote some time to fine art and water colors. She’d also like to explore product design and teaching.
Pinsky said she’s not sentimental but that she will keep about 200 pieces from the Babette archive in addition to those already in her wardrobe.
“When I was picking them out, I looked for things that were breakthroughs in my design career and things I felt catapulted me into another direction. I’m also looking forward to buying clothes again,” Pinsky joked. “I haven’t really bought anything (outside her line) since I started doing separates again.”
“The brand is the brand. You build it over a long time — you don’t just want anyone taking it over.” Babette Pinsky, on closing her clothing line and stores