Saratoga News Photograph by George Sakkestad 'The Next Thing' Tapping into her reservoir of strength, Marian Clayden never considered she wouldn't return to normal By Sandy Sims Marian Clayden is soft-spoken with her British accent. Her clever sense of humor bubbles through now and then. Nothing in her gentle demeanor even hints that she's an internationally recognized artist as well as one of today's major fashion designers. Nor does one sense the reservoir of strength she draws from when life gets tough. "I've seen no one outside of Venice who creates garments like Marian Clayden," says Los Gatan Andrea Thomas, a world traveler and travel writer and past president of the Cattle Baron's Ball. "Marian Clayden's not a limelight hog like most of the designers," Thomas says. "She stays in the background. It's refreshing." However, since the early 1980s, when Clayden turned her talent toward fashion design, her garments have certainly been in the limelight. They've found their way into the exclusive couture sections of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman and into the wardrobes of such celebrities as Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, Priscilla Presley, Kirstie Alley, Oprah Winfrey, Frances Lear and a host of others. Before Clayden was a fashion designer, she had already made her mark in the international world of fine art. Her textile art hangs in the permanent collections of museums like the Smithsonian, the Victoria and Albert in London, the Dromes in France, the Nagoya City Museum in Japan, the de Young in San Francisco and the Oakland Museum of California. Her background brings a unique skill to her fashion design. Each garment is a work of art, beginning with the very fabric itself. Special jacquard looms in Lyons, France, weave the designs she creates into her signature fabric--cut velvet. In her home-studio in Monte Sereno and in her Los Gatos production studio, Clayden dyes and fashions velvets, silks, laces, and satins from around the world into garments that are luminous, sensuous, stunning, quintessentially feminine. She believes deeply in creating art/fashion for women that nourishes them physically and spiritually--fashion for "real women," she says, not the fantasy that male designers create for. The spirituality, focus, and determination that Clayden brings to her art took an unexpected and personal detour on Feb. 9, 1994. "My life was perfect," she says. "My business was doing well; my children were grown, and I'd just had my first grandchild." She'd just finished introducing her fall collection in New York. Sitting in her room at the Plaza Hotel, Clayden suddenly found she couldn't write. "I knew something was wrong," she recalls, "and called the front desk." Four days later she woke up in New York's St. Luke's Hospital to find her two children, her son-in-law and her husband, Roger, at her side. She had suffered a brain hemorrhage and was paralyzed on her right side. She'd also had a craniotomy, which means the doctor had to go through the left side of her skull to remove the blood and blood clot injuring her brain. For most people, this would be a devastating life blow. "I wasn't frightened," Clayden recalls. "I remember thinking, 'This is just the next thing.'" The professionals who treated her would later be amazed at her near-100-percent recovery. "It never occurred to me that I wouldn't get back to normal," she says. But the road back was not easy. Clayden was transferred to Good Samaritan Hospital, and then on March 9, about 212 weeks after her hemorrhage, she was admitted Los Gatos Community Rehabilitation Center. Maybe it's the British stiff upper lip; maybe it's the fact that she grew up in the north of England after the devastation of World War II; maybe she developed an inner strength at the young age of 3 when her father died in a car accident. Whatever it was, Clayden was able to cut right through the emotions and get to the tough job of rehabilitation. "Marian was the perfect patient," Dr. Mario Giorgianni, the physiatrist (a physician specializing in physical medicine and rehabilitation) who oversaw Clayden's rehabilitation, recalls. "She put her trust in the professionals, and did everything we asked her to do. Marian was kind and considerate and grateful for everything the staff did for her," Giorgianni remembers. "She also had top care," he adds. "That is an excellent rehab center." In fact, it is internationally known. At Los Gatos Community Rehabilitation Center, staff emphasize getting the paralyzed or weak side of the body working as much and as soon as possible. "We are unique that way," occupational therapist Susan Chin explains. Other rehab centers often teach patients to compensate with the normal side of the body. "We hate it when we see a patient with their deficient arm in a sling," she says. The tough work of rehab at Los Gatos begins right after admission. That's when the patient is assessed by the staff. Speech and language pathologist May Goodreau says that sometimes it seems cruel because the patient's deficiencies are suddenly laid out before them. "That was the only time I saw Marian disturbed," Goodreau recalls. Fortunately for Clayden, the paralysis on the right side of her body meant the damage had been done to the left side of her brain--the part of the brain that does the logical, detailed part of thinking. This meant the right side--that does the creative thinking--was left intact. Clayden's husband, Roger, laughs when he recalls his wife saying, "Oh well, I never use the left side anyway." Roger is the logical, detailed, left-brain one in the family. He is the business manager for Clayden Inc. Clayden had some positives going for her. She was young (people in their 50s have a better recovery rate). She was highly motivated. "She was like a sponge," Chin says. "Her whole attitude was one of willingness." She had great support from her family. And she had the ability to understand the specifics of her deficiencies. According to Chin, this is crucial to rehabilitating the muscles. First patients must recognize the deficiency, then start stimulating and re-educating the muscle. Finally, they need to use the muscles in real-life situations. Clayden, for instance, was compensating for her weakened right arm by using her shoulder muscles to lift it. In order to get the muscles and nerves in the lower arm working again, Clayden had to stop using her shoulder. She was able to understand exactly what the problem was, then do exercises to keep the shoulder down while exercising the weak muscles. Finally, she had to practice it all while eating or brushing her teeth. She had to work on the muscles of her face, her leg and on her speech. It was grueling work. "It was exhausting," Clayden recalls. "We went from 9 to 5 non-stop. We only broke for lunch. "It's important for people to realize that there is life after 'brain attack,'" Dr. Giorgianni explains. (Brain attack is the latest term for hemorrhages and clots on the brain.) It's not unusual for people to give up too soon. For example, many who could drive again, never do. After just 15 days in rehab, Clayden returned to her Monte Sereno home. There was still a lot of work to do. "She was fantastic," Giorgianni recalls, "because she continued faithfully to do her exercises and showed up for all her follow-up appointments." Getting back to her art was crucial. "It really makes me whole," she explains. Besides, she had another collection to present in the fall. As soon as possible, she was working a couple of hours a day, then more, all the while religiously exercising. Her walking and stair-climbing improved, her speech got better, but her right hand continued to be the toughest problem. At one point she even fell and broke her right arm. That didn't deter her. "Marian is a very determined woman," her husband says. "She never got depressed, just frustrated at times," he recalls. He says the worst time for her was at about six months when the improvements slowed down--especially her hand. One day, frustrated over her right hand, Clayden complained to her husband that she couldn't draw her designs. She remembers him saying to her: "Nonsense. Just get a fat pencil and draw big." So she went out and got some flowers from her garden and drew water lilies, which has become one of her signature designs. The outside world had no idea this drama was being played out in Clayden's private life. She wanted it that way. "I wanted my work to stand on its own," she says. "I didn't want sympathy." She has only recently decided to share this personal experience because she knows it might help someone who is going through the same thing. In May 1995, a little over a year after her brain hemorrhage, Clayden received the most prestigious fashion designer award in Northern California, the Absolute Golden Shears Award. This event turned into more than a professional accomplishment. "I was worried," she recalls, "because I needed to give a speech. I kept it very simple, and it went fine." Physical therapist Linda Goshgarian--who had worked with Clayden--saw an article about the award in the San Francisco Focus magazine. She recognized her former patient's face in the picture. "I couldn't believe it," Goshgarian recalls. Clayden was holding both arms up high. "I just thought 'look at that range of motion'." A year and a half after her brain hemorrhage, with rest periods fitted in, Clayden was working full-time and doing aerobic walking. Two years later, her hand was still improving. The kind of focus and determination Clayden showed in her rehabilitation has been with her since a young age when she knew she wanted to be an artist. Perhaps the desire was cast in her DNA. Her grandfather and father were silversmiths, craftsmen who created fine silver tea sets for a large silver company in Sheffield, England. An uncle on her mother's side was one of the animation artists for Betty Boop. Even the elements of fashion design began incubating early when Clayden's mother and aunt made her clothes. They'd ask Clayden to choose what she wanted from pattern books and pictures. She'd pick a certain style sleeves from one pattern and a collar from another, and her mother and aunt would put them together just the way she asked. "I didn't think of myself as designing clothes." What was more important she explains is that she learned she didn't need to know how to sew to be able create clothes. "Many young designers try to do it all and become overwhelmed and give up," Clayden explains. "I still don't sew." she confesses. Today, she has a staff of more than 25 in her Los Gatos studio who do the things she doesn't do. Clayden's art evolved over time. She majored in art in college and became a painter. When she wanted to add texture and a bit of sculpture to her work, she began cutting and dyeing fabrics to add to her paintings. "I enjoyed my hands in the dye, the bubbling water, the steam rolling up," she explains. This intimate connection with the medium was exciting, quite different from the remote contact she'd experienced with the paint at the end of the brush. With dyeing too, there is an element of chance or flow. Clayden's free spirit found this exciting, and she turned to textile art. There she discovered the ancient Japanese Shibori technique for dyeing fabrics, which she has used ever since. In 1971 Clayden showed her work at the American Crafts Museum's Fabric Vibrations Show in New York. The counterculture dominated the scene at the time, and tie-dye was big. Clayden's work, though not tie-dye, resonated with the times, and the show launched her into the international scene. Her fabrics were used in banners and costumes for several stage productions of Hair. Fashion designers commissioned her to design fabrics for their garments. The next thing for Clayden was her own fashion design. "My art is more alive now with women wearing it, more so than the art that hangs on the wall," she explains. "Her work is timeless, Saratogan Steffi Sims says: "I've worn my Clayden outfits over many years." Sims has outfits well over 10 years old that she still wears. Clayden wants women to be able to wear her clothes for all occasions, to be able to dress them up or down. "Most of my clothes are outfits," she says "because that's more versatile." Clayden outfits and gowns go to the opera, to weddings, to work. Linda Floyd, events chairwoman of the Cattle Baron's Ball this year, took the skirt of a Clayden outfit, matched it up with a suede top, a western belt and some cowboy boots and wore it to the foot-stomping Cattle Baron's Ball. She mixes her Clayden pieces all the time. "They pack easy," she says. "They're light too. It feels like you're not wearing a thing." Clayden's focus hasn't changed; it's still her art and her family. "I've come out a lot wiser though," she says. She points to her right shoulder. "Death was sitting right here, and I was looking ahead. I felt comfortable with it there." She was never one to bother with trivialities, but now she's even more that way. "I keep my focus on my art and my family," she says. "You have to be focused to get anywhere. Then you travel somewhere in depth." Clayden also keeps her eye on the community where she generously gives to community arts organizations, serves on the boards of the Rehab Center, and the West Valley College Fashion Dept., and lends her support to organizations whose purpose is to support young artisans. In Nov. 1997, slightly less than five years after her brain hemorrhage, Clayden took her fashion design to the next level. She presented her collection at the famed International Seventh on Sixth fashion show in the tents at New York's Bryant Park. This was a major commitment and a major undertaking for her production staff. They had to hire models, arrange for the music and the lights, invite the buyers and the press--organize the entire runway show. Her collection followed Oscar de la Renta's in the schedule. When it was time for the finale, and she walked down the runway with the models, she was overjoyed. There wasn't a hint that she'd once suffered a brain hemorrhage. Clayden's clothes can be found in San Francisco at Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Cicada's, and Rafael's at Union Square and in Carmel at The Augustina boutique. Clayden Inc. has periodic clothing sales in the Los Gatos studio at 101 Church St., Suite 22. Sale dates for 1999 are Jan. 7, April 1, Aug. 5 and Nov. 4 all from 3 to 6 p.m. [ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Saratoga News, December 16, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.