(Madison, WI) Burt Simms Avedon died from complications of Parkinson's disease on May 1, 2018 after living a long, successful life of adventure and excitement. Born in New York on April 15, 1924, he was sent to Missouri Military Academy at age 12 where he learned to fly with over 600 hours of flight time. At age 16, he raced against Jimmy Doolittle for the Thompson trophy in the Cleveland Air Races, where they became lifelong friends.

After graduating from military school, he flew to Rangoon, Burma in November 1941 to join Clair Chennault’s American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers). That group was put on hold a month later when war was declared after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, so he returned to the U.S. and attended UCLA, joined the university's Naval Reserve Officers Training program, and played both football and baseball.

Commissioned as an ensign in 1944, he flew with the carrier-based Flight Group VF-6 in the south Pacific until 1946 when he returned to UCLA to complete his studies, graduating in 1948. The Navy sent him to the Harvard Business School where he wrote for the Harvard Business Review and was awarded an MBA in 1950. Returning to active duty, he fought in jet fighters during the Korean War, flying over 300 missions.

Taking a post-war break from the Navy, he travelled to Kenya to hunt plains game where he met the celebrated professional hunter, author and safari leader J. A. Hunter who hired him as his #3 gun. Burt worked for Hunter as a professional hunter and bush pilot in British East Africa for two years.

He returned to the states and trained to be a test pilot at the National Test Pilot School at Pawtucket River, Maryland and flew for ten years while posted at the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake where he tested laser guidance systems, conducted altitude research and flew prototype fighter jets.

In 1964, he was appointed Chief of Staff for Air Training for NATO in the U.K., Belgium and Italy. In 1979 he joined the Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (A.K.A "Top Gun") at the Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California for six months as an instructor, where he participated in developing the original syllabus. He flew with their Aggressor Squadron in F-15s wearing a Russian uniform and employing Russian flak. During a 2001 interview with the Wisconsin Veterans Museum research staff, he related a memorable incident while flying a training mission as a "good guy", "…one of the kids got on my ass with an F-15 – no, a Northrop F-5 – and then what I did, I told my radio in the back seat, 'Hold on, ‘cause I’m gonna pop gear and flaps.' And I did that – I popped it. And he flew right by me." That maneuver was made famous in the movie "Top Gun".

He was then assigned to Air Group on USS Kennedy in late 1970, and retired from the Navy as a commander in 1972.

Next, he moved to Italy, worked for several clothing companies before being appointed president of the cosmetics firm, Eve of Roma. While living in Italy, he married the Italian socialite Princess Luciana Pinnately, raced Formula One cars and managed the Ferrari racing team.

In 1978, he was contacted by an old Harvard-era friend, Elmer Ward, Sr. (founder of the Palm Beach clothing company) and was asked to lead the acquisition of Willis & Geiger, which had gone bankrupt following the closure of Abercrombie & Fitch, their largest customer. With his combined military/African safari/MBA background, Burt reorganized the company and, joined by his new design partner Susan Colby, re-introduced improved and entirely new versions of many of the iconic Willis & Geiger styles that had so capably outfitted adventurers and explorers like Teddy Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Lindbergh, Sir Edmund Hillary and Amelia Earhart.

After shepherding the company through a series of owners, he sold Willis & Geiger to Land’s End in 1996. As president of the company under Land's End, he transformed Willis & Geiger from a wholesale operation to a direct-mail catalog marketing company. Land’s End closed Willis & Geiger along with their other divisions Territory Ahead and Montbell at the end of 1999 during a well-publicized financial crisis.

After an unsuccessful attempt to buy Willis & Geiger, he and Susan Colby founded the Avedon & Colby Group, Inc. to design premium lifestyle garments for high-profile clients that included Woolrich, J. Peterman, Orvis, Duluth Trading, Beretta, and Eddie Bauer.

In October 2014, at age 91, Burt decided to launch a new line of high-performance adventure and field apparel under his own Avedon & Colby label. His goal was to create a new line of active wear that blended the classic good taste of a bygone era of wilderness exploration with high-performance features never before seen by outdoor enthusiasts. He and Susan Colby hired Harry Campbell and Brittney LaCoste as marketing and advertising advisors and launched the new brand with a Kickstarter campaign that was fully funded within ten days. Avedon & Colby's first product, the Signature Field Shirt, won a Gray's Sporting Journal's "Gray's Best" in December of that year and Sporting Classics' "Award of Excellence" in 2018. 

Sales grew quickly, so the brand reincorporated as Avedon & Colby International Outfitters with Burt, Susan Colby, Harry Campbell and Brittney LaCoste as equal partners.

A long-time member of the prestigious Explorer's Club in New York, Burt once led an expedition to Greenland to find a lost WWII squadron of airplanes being shuttled to Europe that crashed and disappeared after running out of fuel. He was also a member of the exclusive and secretive Quiet Birdmen organization which counted Charles Lindbergh, Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle and Wiley Post as members.He spoke five foreign languages and travelled extensively for both business and pleasure, from Africa to Europe to the Far East.

Burt was a decorated ace in two wars, a published author (his last book "Dead Eye Trilogy", a fictionalized autobiography, was published in 2016), a skilled big game hunter and member of the East African Professional Hunters Association, harvested all of Africa's fabled Big Five, and had many friends in the both the hunting world and the fashion industry. Yet, despite his many accomplishments and bigger-than-life adventures, remained modest, almost to a fault.

Long-time business and design partner Susan Colby recalled her first meeting with Burt in New York. "What struck me first was his charisma, energy and charm. And, god was he handsome! I was really nervous and mentioned how worried I was about my brother who was flying F-4s in Vietnam. He was very reassuring as he described how the F-4 was a strong, powerful, safe fighter jet, and the pride of the Air Force at the time. I never occurred to me that he was a pilot himself, and I only learned about his war experiences after we started working together at Willis & Geiger."

Harry Campbell remembered, "Besides being an incredibly fascinating and charming man, Burt had a style unlike anyone I've ever known. He always dressed impeccably, drove a classic old Mercedes sedan, and carried himself with sublime dignity and grace. He was a design visionary, too, and along with his incredibly talented partner, Susan Colby, were a dynamic duo. During the last three years of his life they worked tirelessly to stockpile an inventory of new product designs that will carry the company for many years into the future. I am deeply grateful to have known and worked with Burt Avedon."

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Burt is survived by his wife, Silvana, three daughters and a son. He will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors later this week.

Contact:  Harry Campbell service@avedoncolby.com