He clothed - and loved - Phila.'s ladies

Tom Marotta may have been the only man to be friends with Frankie Avalon, Bill Blass and Marc Jacobs and to boast a resume that included positions as Fabian's road manager and Saks Fifth Avenue's vice president of couture.

For four decades, he was the most influential man in Philadelphia high fashion, beloved by the region's most elegant ladies.

And how he loved the ladies.

Tom - to know him was to call him Tom - died of cancer Friday and was laid to rest yesterday, presumably in an Armani suit and print silk scarf. He was 73.

Debonair, a true gentleman, and a stealth salesman, Tom Marotta served as fashion director of the late, lamented Nan Duskin, when it was the only game in town, before he moved to Saks to be director of couture, purchasing top collections for several Northeast stores.

"Basically, Saks loved him so much he could do whatever he wanted," said Annette Malandra, one of his myriad protégées.

A proud product of South Philadelphia, Iseminger and McKean, Tom was an anomaly in fashion, a world characterized by insecurity and backstabbing. Tom was a devoted family man, married to his first love, Linda. He regularly attended Catholic Church and rarely said an unkind word.

At the formidable Duskin's, which he had never entered before deciding to work there, it took him 16 years to rise from tie buyer to fashion director.

Family and lifelong friends called him "Chubby," his childhood nickname, though he was hardly that.

Tom was a visionary. He immediately saw something in Ralph Lauren when he was merely hawking neckwear, and was an early champion of Jacobs, Michael Kors and Zac Posen. He seized the new, not only in fashion but movies and music, as likely to tout the latest movie at the Ritz or British rock band as next fall's silhouette.

A handsome man with silver hair, round chestnut eyes and bovine eyelashes, Tom bought designers early, and waited for his customers to come around. Years ago, when he invested heavily in Armani, only to see it marked down precipitously that first season, Tom called his less deep-pocketed clients to browse the wares. I still have that brown chenille jacket.

Not that he always understood the verities of some women's bank accounts. He had me try on a red jacket so magnificent it haunts me to this day. It was perfect in every way except price, $2,400 - fashion can be cruel like that - a few hundred more than my first car.

Days later, I turned on the television to see one of Hong Kong's richest women sporting the same Chanel. That was Tom, dangerous on the sales floor, thinking a reporter and an aristocrat were entitled to the same splendid clothes.

"He made women feel good in the best possible way. He treated women better than any man I have ever met," said Amy Schaeffer, Saks' local special-events coordinator.

"I think what makes him so successful is that Tom loves women," his adored wife, Linda, once said. "And he particularly loves to see them dressed beautifully."

Though he rose to a position where he was buying clothes in Europe and New York for multiple Saks locations, Tom never stopped selling, maintaining a base of 50 heavy hitters, women who spend $25,000 to $800,000 on their wardrobe each season. He could spend hours in the dressing room, supervising fittings and fetching accessories to complete an ensemble.

His true client base was substantially larger. Bala Cynwyd's Fifth Avenue Club caters to 325 dedicated consumers, "and he knew each and every one of them personally and could tell me everything about them," said Malandra, the club director.

He "saw women as a canvas, and a garment would flash in his mind," Malandra said. "If it didn't feel right to a woman, Tom would tell them to immediately take it off."

Not that he wasn't above gently leading them in a new direction, getting women to try on an outfit they may have never considered, only to discover it looked surprisingly good.

"You know, if I can get it on them, and they like it, then it gets sold," he once told me. Many women have declared Tom never sold them anything they didn't initially like, only to realize that wasn't true at all. Tom pushed with a cashmere glove.

Tom's gift was achieving an ideal balance in his life, which contributed to his professional longevity and dominance in the region. He understood that fashion was ephemeral. He was no snob. His preference was to be with upbeat people, people prone to laughter. "He loved his work, but he couldn't wait to get home to his family," Malandra said. Linda, his two children, their spouses and his five grandchildren were everything, and he was forever pulling their photos from his wallet. He feasted on the magic of everyday life.

"I put on clothes because I have to wear them. They don't mean anything to me as a person," he once said. "I mean, I like to pamper myself occasionally, but it's not the main thing in my life. But to make a woman look sexy, the best she can look, well, that's something else entirely."