Fred Segal, Los Angeles celebrity fashion retailer, dies at 87

Fred Segal, the Los Angeles-based celebrity fashion retailer name-checked in “Clueless and “Legally Blonde,” is dead at 87.

He died Thursday of complications from a stroke at a Santa Monica hospital, his publicist announced Friday.

Segal “was an innovator, a forward thinker, a rule-breaker, a mentor to so many, such a lover of life and a humanitarian,” his family said in a statement obtained by the Hollywood Reporter. “Anyone who knew him felt his powerful energy. He worked his whole life to have self-love and to teach all of us to love one another.”

Segal opened his first shop in 1961 in West Hollywood, where he primarily sold denim jeans and flannel and velvet ensembles. The Fred Segal name has been synonymous with Los Angeles style since the early 1960s, The Times wrote in 2017.

Among his earliest fans were the Beatles, Diana Ross, Elvis Presley and Farrah Fawcett, the company website said.

“In the 1960s, there weren’t paparazzi and tabloids and internet like there are today,” Segal previously said. “But the Beatles came in to shop, and it got so much attention that it caused a traffic jam outside.”

At the height of Fawcett mania during the mid-1970s, the “Charlie’s Angels” star was famously photographed riding a skateboard while sporting a pair of Segal’s hip-hugging jeans and a red shirt.

Segal’s designs also appealed to younger fashionistas — real and fictional. In the 1995 comedy “Clueless,” Alicia Silverstone’s Cher Horowitz throws a mini-tantrum when she can’t find one of her favorite tops.

“Lucy, where’s my white collarless shirt from Fred Segal?” Cher cries out in despair.

And “Legally Blonde” heroine Elle Woods, played by Reese Witherspoon, recalls an encounter with a Hollywood A-lister at his store.

“Last week, I saw Cameron Diaz at Fred Segal, and I talked her out of buying this truly heinous angora sweater,” Witherspoon’s character says.

In September 2018, Angelina Jolie and two of her children, Pax and Zahara, were photographed by Hollywood Pipeline at a Fred Segal store, with one snap showing one of Jolie’s handlers carrying two full bags.

Segal is survived by his wife, Tina; five children; and two stepchildren, according to the Hollywood Reporter.