Dawn Mello

Dawn Mello was the farseeing merchant who forged a career in the mid-1970s and ’80s, recasting Bergdorf Goodman, a once musty relic on Fifth Avenue, as a temple of high-end consumption, and who in the ’90s helped restore luster to Gucci and a cluster of fading brands. A much revered figure whose keen eye, nurturing personality and regally understated aesthetic helped shift the landscape of American fashion and retailing, Ms. Mello died on Sunday at her home in Manhattan. She was 88. Born in Lynn, Mass., on Oct. 5, 1931, she was the daughter of Blanche (Raczlowski) Mello and Anthony Mello. Her father was a mechanic and her mother a homemaker. In the early ’70s, she rose from buying officer to general merchandise manager and vice president at the May Department Store Company. She studied in Boston at the Modern School of Fashion Design, arrived in New York in the 1950s and modeled for a time. She served as an executive at the May Company in the late ’60s, and during the early ’70s, as director of fashion merchandising at the now defunct B. Altman department store. She worked alongside Ira Neimark, the store’s chief executive, who, after leaving Altman to assume the top position at Bergdorf in 1975, invited Ms. Mello to join him as fashion director. In 1989, she joined Gucci, then a down-at-the-heels Italian leather goods house troubled by family scandals, counterfeiting, excessive licensing and distribution. As creative director, she moved the company headquarters to Florence and was swift to enlist Florentine artisans to revamp, tone down and upgrade the products, including the company’s signature bamboo-handle handbags and snaffle-bit loafer. In 1999 she left once more, eventually joining financial executive Martha Wikstrom to form a consulting firm for luxury clients. Together they created Atelier Fund to invest in a new generation of emerging designers. She leaves no immediate survivors.