The Members Only founder who created an ’80s fashion essential

Herb Goldsmith was hunting for a name for his new fashion brand in the 1970s when he noticed a sign at his Long Island, N.Y., country club: “Members Only.” Those two words perfectly captured the “snob appeal” that Goldsmith wanted, and he soon found a garment worthy of the label at a menswear store in Munich—a jacket with narrow shoulder epaulets and a Nehru-style collar. Goldsmith made a sketch, added a strap to close the collar, and selected a shiny chintz fabric available in a rainbow of colors. Goldsmith recruited Anthony Geary, a handsome star of the soap opera General Hospital, to appear in ads. The jacket was an instant fashion phenomenon, worn by prep-school students, pop stars, and even Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Goldsmith was born in the Bronx to a homemaker mother and a father who “was a traveling salesman dealing in men’s coats,” said The Wall Street Journal. After a stint in the Army, where he talked his way into a job as an Armed Forces radio DJ, Goldsmith tried and failed to become an actor. So he went to work for his father and later founded his own apparel company.

By the mid-’80s, Goldsmith “felt his celebrity campaigns were going stale,” said The New York Times. So he shifted his entire ad budget to public service announcements, including anti-drug campaigns, that mentioned Members Only “in a quick tag line at the end.” When sales soared to $125 million a year in the late ’80s, Goldsmith sold the firm and turned his attention to Broadway, producing some 30 shows. He saw a direct connection between fashion and the stage. Consumers, he wrote, “have to feel good about the product and ready to pay the price of admission: The sale!”

Herb Goldsmith