California Apparel News

A celebration-of-life gathering is planned for Oct. 11 at the Pasadena, Calif., home of Linda Dorsey, who died on Oct. 3 after a long battle with colon cancer. She was 65.

Dorsey was a longtime member of the Los Angeles fashion industry, working as a designer, merchandiser, textile designer and sales representative for companies such as Wrapper, Judy Knapp, Nieman Brothers and Rainbow Textiles.

Dorsey also cultivated a side career as a BMX announcer—a vocation she picked up when her son, Brian, was competing in BMX races.

Later in life, she left the garment industry for the printing industry, working with Universal Printing, a large-format printer in Burbank, Calif. The company produces printed ads that wrap buildings and buses. California Speedway was one of Dorsey’s clients, according to Sheila Jones, a textile sales representative who worked with Dorsey at Rainbow Textiles and more recently at Nieman Brothers.

“If you’ve been in the industry for the last 20 years or so, then you know Linda,” Jones said.

Dorsey was known for her good-natured disposition—“She was hysterical,” said Dorsey’s Nieman Brothers co-worker Joy Stevens—and for compassionate demeanor.

“Linda was so special to me,” said Jones, who recalled that when she had her son, Dorsey and Stevens were the first to visit her in the hospital.

“She was a legend in her time. There’s no one else like her,” said Stevens, who praised Dorsey’s talent as a designer and as a salesperson “I always said, ’She could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo.’”

Born in New York and raised in Scarsdale, N.Y., Linda Dorsey moved to the West Coast in the late 1960s to pursue a career in fashion, according to her son.

“She cut her teeth in the garment industry,” said Brian Dorsey, who added he was fielding phone calls from his mother’s many friends in the apparel industry.

Linda Dorsey was also beloved in the action-sports world, an industry she first encountered in 1979 when Brian Dorsey began BMX racing. She started as a scorekeeper and then began announcing races—first in California and eventually announcing national events.

“She became so well-known in the sport, she was recently inducted into the BMX Hall of Fame,” said Brian Dorsey, who said his mother became famous in the BMX world because she gave many of the athletes their nicknames.

The National Bicycle League, an organization that promotes Bicycle Motocross Racing, or BMX racing, called her “the voice of the NBL.”

Dorsey is survived by her son, her mother, a sister and a brother.

A Web site has been set up at www.dorsey132.com/linda to commemorate Linda Dorsey and allow friends and family to share memories about her.

To honor her love of dogs, the family requests that instead of perishable items, donations be made to Linda Dorsey’s favorite charity, the Wiggle Waggle Walk, an annual fund-raising event sponsored by the Pasadena Humane Society. —Alison A. Nieder