Fashion Definitions — fashion history, brands and industry terms from Apparel Search
Sighsten Herrgard, 1943 to 1989, was a Swedish fashion designer educated at Beckmans School of Design in Stockholm and at the pattern development academies in Stockholm and Copenhagen. His career took off in 1966 when he won the Courtauld International Design Competition with a collection of unisex clothing. In the 1970s he established himself internationally in Paris and North America, started a company in Stockholm and worked with television, magazines and shows. On July 30, 1987 he held a press conference announcing that he had AIDS, becoming the first Swedish celebrity to go public about the disease and giving AIDS a face in Sweden. He survived another two years.
Sighsten Herrgard, (1943-1989), was a Swedish fashion designer. He was the first Swedish celebrity with AIDS to go public about it, "giving AIDS a face".
Sighsten Herrgard got his fashion education at Beckmans School of Design in Stockholm and at the pattern development academies in Stockholm and Copenhagen. His career took off in 1966 when he won the Courtauld International Design Competition with a collection of unisex clothing. In the 1970s Herrgard etablished internationally in Paris and North America; he also started a company in Stockholm and worked with television, magazines and shows.
On 30 July 1987 Herrgard held a dramatic press conference, stating "I'm going to die. I have AIDS. I may only have months left, but I want to die with dignity".
At this time in Sweden the disease and its risks was still little understood. Herrgard much discussed this with his doctors and decided that "AIDS needed to get a face". Although doctors only gave him months to live, a year at most, he survived another two years.
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Designer Definition (from U.S Department of Labor)
Herrgard's education was unusually technical. He studied at Beckmans School of Design in Stockholm and then at the pattern development academies in Stockholm and Copenhagen. Pattern development is the engineering side of fashion: translating a design into the flat shapes that, cut and sewn, become a garment that fits. Designers who master pattern work control their clothes from the inside out, and Scandinavian design culture — practical, skilled, internationally minded — rewarded exactly that competence. His breakthrough came through competition. In 1966 he won the Courtauld International Design Competition with a collection of unisex clothing. Winning an international competition as a young Swedish designer put his name in front of the industry in Paris and London at a stroke, and the winning subject was forward-looking: unisex clothing in 1966, when men's and women's fashion were still rigidly separated departments, marked him as a designer thinking about where dress was going rather than where it had been.
In the 1970s Herrgard established himself internationally, in Paris and North America — the two markets a Scandinavian designer had to conquer to be more than a local name. At the same time he started a company in Stockholm, keeping a home base, and worked with television, magazines and shows. That media work matters to his story. A designer comfortable on television and in magazines becomes a public personality, not merely a name on a label, and Herrgard's public standing in Sweden was built as much through that visibility as through his collections. It is also what made the event of 1987 possible: only a genuine celebrity's announcement could do what his did.
On July 30, 1987, Herrgard held a dramatic press conference and said: I am going to die. I have AIDS. I may only have months left, but I want to die with dignity. At that time in Sweden the disease and its risks were still little understood, and he had discussed it much with his doctors and decided that AIDS needed to get a face. He was the first Swedish celebrity with AIDS to go public about it. The decision converted private catastrophe into public education: an abstract, feared disease acquired, for Swedish audiences, the face of a man they knew from television and fashion pages — articulate, dignified and unafraid to be identified. Although doctors gave him months to live, a year at most, he survived another two years, dying in 1989.
His legacy therefore runs on two tracks that cannot be separated. As a designer he is the Courtauld winner of 1966, the unisex pioneer, the Stockholmer who worked in Paris and North America. As a public figure he is the man who, facing death at 44, chose to spend his remaining standing on making a stigmatised disease discussable in his country. Fashion gave him the face the public recognised; he gave that face to a cause that needed one. That is why his name is still recorded with the phrase attached to it: he gave AIDS a face.
After fashion education at Beckmans School of Design in Stockholm and pattern academies in Stockholm and Copenhagen, Herrgard's career took off in 1966 when he won the Courtauld International Design Competition with a collection of unisex clothing.
In the 1970s Herrgard established himself internationally in Paris and North America. He also started a company in Stockholm and worked with television, magazines and shows.
On July 30, 1987 he announced at a press conference that he had AIDS — the first Swedish celebrity to go public — deciding that AIDS needed to get a face at a time when the disease was still little understood in Sweden.