Ronald Amey

Ronald Amey

Source: The Milwaukee Journal, March 23, 1966

Ronald Amey was born in Arizona in the early 1930s and showed an interest in fashion from a young age, cutting paper dolls as a young child for the girls in his neighborhood. In the United States Air Force as a young man, he met Joseph Burke, another serviceman with whom he began designing and producing fashionable dresses for local socialites – a somewhat illicit business to undertake while in the service, but one that survived due to the support of the officers’ wives who were their clients.

After being discharged, he moved to New York and studied at Parsons School of Design. He worked briefly at several fashion houses before starting his own fashion label with Burke, Burke-Amey, in 1959. They specialized in creating dramatic evening clothes, with Amey designing the garments and Burke handling the business side of things.

Ronald Amey, Dorothy Guidry (Mrs. Warren P. Knowles), and Sister John Francis Schuh standing with inaugural gown

Source: The Milwaukee Journal, February 20, 1976

Amey helped Mount Mary College begin their fashion design program in the mid-1960s, co-teaching couture classes with Sister Aloyse Hessburg, coordinating a fashion show at Mount Mary, and otherwise supporting the fledgling program. (For more about his relationship with Mount Mary, see Amey's page in The Founding of a Fashion Program exhibit.) He received the first Gold Needle Award from the fashion design program. He also designed the 1967 inaugural ballgown for Mrs. Warren P. Knowles (née Dorothy Guidry), the Wisconsin governor’s wife, whom he met at a Mount Mary event; Mrs. Knowles donated the ensemble (Object ID #1967.05.abc) to Mount Mary after the ball.

In 1970 Amey bought out Burke and continued designing clothes under the Amey label for several years. He was known especially for elaborate evening wear, designed for wealthy women, and for his use of high-quality fabrics in dramatic colors and prints. By the early 1980s he was working as a freelance designer for Aurura Ruffolo Inc., and he died in 1986.

The first set of garments below is from Amey's time as part of the Burke-Amey label. The second set is from after he acquired the entirety of the business.