June Van Dyke; Costumer, Producer of Fashion Shows

June Van Dyke, producer of fashion shows and a wardrobe coordinator who was a longtime assistant to costume designer Edith Head, has died. She was 69.

Van Dyke died Friday in her Los Angeles home of respiratory complications.

For many years, Van Dyke managed the Cinema Glamour Shop, which sells movie and television stars’ donated clothing and costumes to benefit the Motion Picture and Television Fund. She also was a tireless worker with the Screen Smart Set Auxiliary of the fund.

When Head died in 1981, the noted designer left her personal collection of more than 100 costumes to Van Dyke. The fashion show producer has repeatedly made these available for major fund-raising events in Southern California, presenting them as “The Edith Head Collection by June Van Dyke.”

Van Dyke was also known nationally as a fashion advisor who delivered a series of lectures, “What You Wear Speaks So Loudly I Cannot Hear What You Are Saying,” to major corporations and professional organizations.

She offered private wardrobe counseling to business and entertainment professionals in Hollywood, Washington and in Europe.

With a strong belief in “timeless” clothes, Van Dyke was critical of designer collections offered in the 1990s. Major designers, she suggested, were providing expensive “campy” clothing as a way to escape the realities of the stressful decade.

Through Head, Van Dyke met many of the stars who wore Head’s costumes, many of which have been preserved by collectors and museums. Among them was Gloria Swanson, whom Head gowned for the film “Sunset Boulevard.”

“Edith was the greatest at creating the characters through their clothes,” Van Dyke once told The Times. “And when she dressed [William] Holden [for the same film] in a vicuna coat and tails, he was drop-dead gorgeous. It was through the clothes that he was transformed from a newspaper hack into a very sophisticated escort.”

Van Dyke is survived by two sons, Richard and Truman III, and two grandchildren, all of Los Angeles.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to the Motion Picture and Television Fund, 23300 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills, CA 91364, or to the Screen Smart Set Auxiliary.