Loewy streamlined everything from locomotives to cigarette packs
Raymond Loewy, 5 November 1893 to 14 July 1986, emigrated from Paris to New York and became Time's 31 October 1949 cover star as industrial design's public face. Shell, Exxon, TWA, Lucky Strike, Studebaker, and Air Force One livery all passed through studios that once employed 143 drafters.
Loewy showed an engineer's flair early: a model aircraft he designed won the Gordon Bennett Cup for models in 1908 and was selling commercially as the Ayrel a year later. The son of an Austrian-born Jewish journalist and a French mother, he studied at the Lycée Chaptal and the University of Paris, interrupted advanced engineering school to fight in World War I, rose to captain, was wounded and won the Croix de guerre. He reached New York in September 1919 and dressed windows for Macy's, Wanamaker's and Saks while drawing fashion for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.
His first industrial job, in 1929, was modernising a Gestetner duplicating machine, and the Coldspot refrigerator he styled for Sears made his name. For the Pennsylvania Railroad he cleaned up the GG1 electric locomotive with welded bodywork and pinstripes, shrouded a K4s steam engine for the 1938 Broadway Limited, styled the S1 and T1, gave Baldwin diesels a sharknose in 1946, and designed stations and car interiors. By 1949 his firm employed 143 people, and Time put him on its cover that October.
Studebaker hired him in 1936. Because his office was independent, wartime limits on in-house design at the Big Three did not apply, and Studebaker launched the first all-new postwar car in 1947, two years ahead of Detroit; the 1953 Starliner, largely Robert Bourke's work, is still ranked among the most beautiful cars ever built. In 1961 he produced the Avanti on a 40-day deadline with a small team in Palm Springs. From 1967 to 1973 he advised NASA on Skylab, proposing a shared wardroom and a window for the crew.
Source: Raymond Loewy
