The words colour, fantasy and glamour are invariably used when describing a Scassi creation. The same words can be employed as aptly in a chronicle of his career, and a life which has led from snowy Montreal to a year of antipodean contrasts in Australia; cruising through the warmth and colour of the South Pacific on the way, to the heady days of postwar Paris and back to North America and a future in New York fashion.

Arnold Scaasi is the last of New York's custom designers. Others make clothes to order but Scassi designs an original couture collection twice a year which he presents to clients and the fashion press in the tradition of the great Parisian couture houses. More importantly, he is a true couturier in that he realises couture is not meant to dress everyone. He tempts and titillates wealthy women with all the luxurious materials available and in doing os is one of these people responsible for keeping all the artistry of high fashion alive. Even his name reflects his commitment to glamour - he reversed the spelling of the original Isaacs to capture the more exotic sound so in keeping with his clothes.

Scassi was drawing and painting by the age of three, but it was not until he was fifteen that he took the first steps along the road that would lead to his career as a couturier. Leaving his home town of Montreal he travelled with his sister to San Francisco and boarded a ship bound for Australia, where he would live with an aunt and complete his final year of high school.

His aunt Ida, originally married in London to one of the Sassoons, had been windowed early and her subsequent travels led her to Australia where she met and married a Mr. Wynn - well known to Australians in the context of Wynn's Wines and Liqueurs. (His son and grandson now operate the Mount Adam winery in South Australia)