Clothing

Anthony Milton Kowalczyk, a retired clothing cutter, died Friday of renal cell carcinoma at the Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie. The Pasadena resident was 71. Mr. Kowalczyk was born in Baltimore and graduated from Patterson High School. He later served in the Army during the Korean War. Mr. Kowalczyk worked as a clothing cutter for I.C. Isaacs & Co. for about 40 years and retired in 1992. He met his wife at work. "He worked on the cutting floor, and I worked on the finishing end," recalled the former Jeraldine Robinette.

There is a certain fashion customer who responds only to sarcasm. And that customer -- hip, disillusioned and teen-age -- happens to be the target for Tower Clothing.Posters recently began appearing around New York of groups of youths posed like a Seattle band. One carries the slogan: "For years we've been noticing how you've come into our stores. Now we're doing something about it."Tower attire was the idea of Shaheen Sadeghi, a former executive at Quicksilver and Gotcha Sportswear. Mr. Sadeghi organized the "anti-mall," a cluster of stores in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Chicago -- It's the first rule for job hunters: Dress for success.But until a group of Chicago businesswomen opened Bottomless Closet last week, that simple formula had eluded thousands of poor women who were unable to afford to buy appropriate clothing for job interviews.The Closet was established to increase the employment potential and marketability of women welfare recipients who want to work, by providing clothing, accessories and fashion guidance for job interviews at no charge."When you go out to get a job and you know that you look right for the position, you feel better about yourself, and you can more effectively tell people why you're qualified for the job," said Lynda Wright, a member of the Closet's board of directors.

Bernard B. Becker, owner of Becker's, one of Baltimore's last full-line men's clothing stores, died of a stroke yesterday at Sinai Hospital. He was 86."He certainly ran a top-notch business, above and beyond any other, the likes of which are not in existence today," said Albert Vincent Murray, an employee of 54 years and friend of Mr. Becker. "He was a very fine gentleman."Mr. Murray was among the many employees who were loyal to Mr. Becker through the years."He had the kind of employees who didn't leave him," Mr. Murray said.

When it comes to fashion, Linda Joy Burke can't be typecast. Depending on her mood, she can look artistic, youthful, conservative, bohemian or eclectic.Such is the fashion life for this performance poet and talent consultant whose closet holds wildly colored high-tops, subtle hand-painted silk shirts and somber wool suits.Although there are days when she wears sweats to blend into the background, Ms. Burke prefers clothes that pack more of a punch."I can put on the oddest things and make them look nice," says Ms. Burke, 37, of Columbia.

You don't often meet an art form that springs into being spontaneously, flourishes for two generations and then dies, but that may be the fate of the art of Inuit textile wall hangings so colorfully on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art.The Inuit, more commonly known as Eskimos, until the mid-20th RTC century lived a nomadic hunting and fishing existence. But in the 1950s famine coupled with a government requirement that they send their children to school drove Inuits to permanent settlements, one of which is Baker Lake in the Canadian Northwest Territories.

Arnold Finkelstein, whose cherubic smile and easy demeanor were as much a part of the Towson scene for 60 years as his family's landmark York Road clothing store, died Wednesday of lymphoma at his Pikesville residence. He was 82.Mr. Finkelstein, an owner and president of Finkelstein's of Towson until it closed in 1994, spent most of his life in the store, offering such garb as blue jeans, khakis, blended oxford shirts, shoes, western apparel and blazers.The No. 8 streetcar swayed and clanged up a dusty York Road and cows still grazed where Hutzler's eventually built its Towson department store when Ellis and Fannie Finkelstein, Mr. Finkelstein's parents, gave up their Calhoun Street grocery and opened the Towson Bargain Store on Chesapeake Avenue.

Annapolis Clothing Co., a Glen Burnie-based women's sports- and career-wear chain with 13 stores in Maryland, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and plans to close six stores in the area.The retailer's assets were listed at $2.3 million and its debts at $1.9 million in papers filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore and made available to the public yesterday.Annapolis Clothing is seeking bankruptcy-court approval to close the six stores as part of a plan to restore profitability.

John A. Mancini Sr., a retired clothing manufacturing executive and noted designer of men's suits, died Wednesday of cancer at his home in Timonium. The former 35-year resident of Lutherville was 78.Mr. Mancini retired in 1979 as vice president and general manager of Maryland Hampstead Clothing Co. in Hampstead, Carroll County, a subsidiary of Paramount Clothing Co. of Baltimore, where he had worked since the late 1950s. The rTC business later was sold to Joseph A. Bank Manufacturing Co."He designed the executive line for Sears, and his suits were traditional three- and two-button, single- and double-breasted suits," said his son, John A. Mancini, a Towson State University history professor.

Annapolis Clothing Co., a once-flourishing women's apparel chain that had as many as seven stores in the Baltimore area in the 1980s, has abandoned its efforts to reorganize and will go out of business.The Glen Burnie-based company will hold a liquidation sale starting tomorrow at its last two stores, at Dobbin Center in Columbia and Perry Hall Crossing Center in Perry Hall. Its stores in Annapolis and at Westview Mall were closed recently, costing about 20 people their jobs. The Westview store had moved there from Security Boulevard.