Stan Herman, the People’s Designer

With a brisk, hobbling stride, Stan Herman trotted past bird-watchers and leaf-peepers in Central Park the other day. The former longest-serving president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America was on one of his uniform-spotting tours. Wearing a military-green hoodie, khakis, and dark sneakers, he sidled up to a Central Park Conservancy worker driving a golf cart. “Have you worn the parka yet?” he asked. (Not yet.) He asked another worker, “Do the pants work for you?” She told him that she loved the multiple pockets. This past spring, Herman, ninety-five, launched the Conservancy’s new, sporty-chic uniforms, one of the latest commissions among dozens of uniforms that he has designed over the decades for all kinds of clients.

“The multiple shades of loden cost more to make, but they look great,” he said. “The people running the Conservancy have an extremely high taste level.”

Aside from uniforms, Herman sells his own loungewear and dresses on QVC, driving his Land Rover to the channel’s headquarters, in Pennsylvania, for the tapings. He still plays tennis (well, doubles) but gave up high fashion decades ago. In his forthcoming illustrated memoir, “Uncross Your Legs,” he describes how, after an auspicious start in the nineteen-sixties, designing for Mr. Mort, he was “airborne” by the early seventies. “I was on everyone’s guest list for five years,” he writes.

Exiting the Park, he jumped into a cab and rode past the zoo, where he showed a faux-fur collection in 1972, serving guests peanuts and hot dogs. “The Times critic told me she didn’t eat hot dogs,” he said. The taxi drove past more memories: the former site of Henri Bendel, a fashion mecca, where he’d had his own boutique, as did Ralph Lauren, whom he once counselled early in Lauren’s career. Peering into the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue, he remarked on the return of pleats on Brunello Cucinelli’s men’s trousers, and then recalled having the store’s first Young Designer boutique, which went bust within a year. The faux-fur line and the Bendel’s account met the same fate.

But the uniform business came calling. Herman’s early jobs included Avis, McDonald’s, T.W.A., United, and the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Another Vegas resort, he recalled, wanted “tits and ass.” More recently, he designed the uniforms for J.F.K.’s T.W.A. Hotel.

“When you design for Saks, you don’t know who wears your clothes, but with uniforms you know, and you hear about it,” he said. “I’m the people’s designer. I like being accessible.”

This was once a drawback. In the sixties, the C.F.D.A. denied him membership as a ready-to-wear designer because his clothes were too inexpensive. He eventually got in, but, even as the president who conceived of New York Fashion Week, he stayed humble. “The minute I stepped down, they seated me at the C.F.D.A. gala in the back, by the toilets,” he said. Diane von Furstenberg, his successor, called to apologize.

On Fifth, his cab passed a UPS deliveryman in classic brown shorts. “Look, the uniform’s two-tone now,” he said. “They added color-blocking.” He hopped out at Forty-seventh Street and went into a McDonald’s. The leisure-suit-like, stripe-accented uniforms that he created in 1975 had been replaced with gray golf shirts. “At least all their pants are black,” he said. He asked an employee, “You like what you’re wearing?”

“If you want to change it, I’ll take it,” she said.

He scooted, with the agility of a former gymnast, across Fortieth Street and into a FedEx store, to admire the reflective silver piping on the polo shirts that he’d designed, and the smart purple-and-navy cardigans with orange accents. “We did a good job with that,” he said.

The final stop was Bryant Park, where Herman cornered two newly hired rest-room attendants and asked how they felt about their uniforms. He’d chosen the green to match the park’s London plane trees, he said, even though they’d ended up being “more of a true Martini olive.” The startled young people didn’t know what to say, except thank you.

Herman is attached to the park, where he likes to feed the sparrows and is a member of the board that oversees it. “One day, I hope they’ll dedicate a bench with my name so people can sit on me,” he said. Heading across the street to his office, for which he’d just signed a new lease, he crossed paths with an Amazon Prime delivery guy. Over an ill-fitting blue polo, he wore a blue-and-gray vest with a crooked arrow-cum-smile on the back. Herman looked it over. “A poor man’s FedEx,” he said. ♦