The Fort Wayne, Ind. native was just days shy of his 80th birthday. The cause was said to be cancer.

Blass was treated for throat cancer two years ago.

During a career that spanned over six decades, Blass made his brand of sophisticated sportswear -- a mix of masculine details and tailoring with feminine touches that spoke to the glamour of the 1930s -- the standard for upper-crust doyennes like Brooke Astor, Nan Kempner, Gloria Vanderbilt, and first ladies Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush.

His clean, modern classics were consistently sought-after; the charming designer was openly adored. "I fell in love with him, like every woman," Kempner once said. "He was as warm, friendly, intelligent and talented as he was good-looking."

Born William Ralph Blass on June 22, 1922 to Ralph Aldrich Blass, a traveling salesman, and Ethyl Keyser Blass, a dressmaker, the designer, who never married, began tracing the path of his career early.

"Something about glamour interested me," he told People magazine in 1999. "All my schoolbooks had drawings of women on terraces with a cocktail and a cigarette."

Blass found himself closer to that milieu when he moved to New York in 1940 after winning second prize in a design contest sponsored by The Chicago Tribune. He studied briefly at the McDowell School of Fashion, and then worked as a sketch artist for Seventh Avenue clothes manufacturer, David Crystal, for $35 a week.

After a tour in the Army as part of the specialized counterintelligence unit, the 603rd Camouflage Battalion, Blass worked briefly for Anne Klein, and then for manufacturer Anna Miller, which would later merge with Maurice Retner to form Maurice Retner Ltd.

Rising through the ranks and gaining a reputation for his designs, Blass put his name on the label when Retner died in 1960. Ten years later, he bought out the firm and changed the name to Bill Blass Ltd. The house became a $700 million-a-year worldwide company.

Blass's label grew to include menswear in 1967, a more moderately priced line called Blassport, and 97 licenses by the mid-1990s, but he never abandoned his couture endeavors. He also stayed near to the notion that "Fashion can be bought by anybody; style takes discernment," as he once said. "It has to do with individuality."

The designer himself established a recognizable and oft praised individuality, dressing in bespoke suits or, at his 18th-century home in New Preston, Conn., in a country gentleman's version of jeans and a Shetland sweater. He was a regular on Best Dressed lists.

More than his impeccable presentation, however, Blass was known for his generosity. He famously donated $10 million to the New York Public Library, and was also an early and ardent supporter of AIDS programs.

Blass was honored with the Coty American Fashion Critics Award three times, and won that same body's first menswear award in 1968. The Council of Fashion Designers of America awarded him a Lifetime Achievement in 1987, and their inaugural Humanitarian Leadership Award in 1996.

The designer was also given the Lighthouse Lifetime Achievement Award at the Winternight 2000 Gala for his charitable services. The award came a year after he sold his company for a reported $50 million and several months after his last New York fashion show, for which he received a standing ovation.

"It's been a great life," he said at the event -- which offered guests Blass's signature dish, meatloaf -- as he enjoyed projected photographs from his private collection.

With typical wit and humility, Blass admitted to only one regret: "That I don't look as young as I did in those pictures."