John Weitz, a fashion designer with the sleek personal style of James Bond and an unconventional career that began in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, died Thursday of cancer in Bridgehampton, N.Y. He was 79.
Mr. Weitz was a savvy businessman who pioneered product licensing, put his signature on everything from business suits to ice buckets and won a Coty Award, fashion’s top prize for style and innovation, in 1974. At the same time he was an accomplished writer of fiction and non-fiction with an expertise in Adolf Hitler’s Germany.
His men’s style book, “Man In Charge; The Executive’s Guide to Grooming, Manners and Travel,” was a bestseller the same year Mr. Weitz won the Coty.
He was known by friends as a slim, dashing figure who excelled at high-speed sports and moved with an international set. The air of adventure, and even danger, that surrounded him traced back to his early 20s, when he served in Army Intelligence from 1943 to 1946.
He rarely talked about his experiences as an agent, not even with his family. He had signed a statement agreeing not to discuss any details before he left the military. Still, in the 1970s when he was at the height of his career, his friend Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who produced the James Bond movies, saw the parallels and told Mr. Weitz he reminded him of Ian Fleming’s character.
Born Hans Werner Weitz in Berlin in 1923, he migrated to England with his parents in the early 1930s as Hitler was rising to power. Mr. Weitz’s father, Robert, was a prosperous ready-to-wear clothing manufacturer and World War I hero who was awarded the Iron Cross.
Mr. Weitz followed his father’s lead and went into fashion, starting as an apprentice in London. After the war, he went to New York and designed women’s sportswear collections built on pea jackets and wrap-around skirts with occasional surprises: ostrich feather pullovers, leather coats lined in red and men’s striped shirts as swimsuit cover-ups caught American women’s attention.
In 1964, Mr. Weitz launched a menswear line that he personally modeled in stores. His body-contoured dress shirts were half the width of the boxy-cuts that ruled men’s style at the time. Called the “European cut,” a shirt by Mr. Weitz required the wearer to maintain a flat stomach, like his.
He is survived by his wife, a daughter and three sons.
