Lee Leonard, one in all the principals of the DLS Outfitters consulting firm, has died on the age of 74.

Fred Derring, president and founding father of DLS, said he believes Leonard passed away on Recent 12 months’s Eve or Recent 12 months’s Day but wasn’t sure of the precise day or reason for death.

Derring said he grew concerned when he couldn’t reach Leonard by phone or email and went to his apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on Jan. 1 to examine on him. He didn’t get a response and needed to call the police and fire department to interrupt down the door. It was then that they found Leonard’s body.

“We’re pretty sure it was a heart attack,” Derring said, adding that he’d had a heart ailment that had landed him in a hospital for 10 days not way back and was under the care of a cardiologist.

Derring said he first met Leonard in Washington, D.C., some 50 years ago when Derring was working for the department store retailer Garfinckel’s and Leonard was at Farnsworth Reed, an area haberdasher. “I hired him to come back to Garfinckel’s,” Derring said.

Although the 2 moved on to other jobs, they kept in contact. Derring, who had been working at a consulting firm, decided to open a buying office in Recent York City to assist independent retailers compete with larger stores. He began the business in 1980 together with Virginia Sandquist-Wenzel and shortly asked Leonard to affix them. The corporate was named DLS after the three of them.

Today, DLS still works with independent stores providing consulting services to men’s and girls’s retailers to “help them work out the marketplace,” Derring said. “Lee and I handled all the lads’s while Virginia does the accessories and girls’s.” Derring and Leonard were familiar faces on the U.S. trade shows in addition to at Pitti Uomo, where they helped specialty stores discover latest brands and stay abreast of fixing fashion trends.

Leonard retired from DLS in 2015 after he got married and moved to South Korea when his wife got a job teaching at an area university. He remained there for 3 years before returning to the States. Although the wedding ended, Leonard opted to rejoin DLS on a part-time basis following the divorce, Derring said. “I needed the assistance.”

Along with his acumen in the style industry, Leonard was also an actor. Derring said that he decided to take acting lessons when he realized he was uncomfortable speaking publicly in front of the DLS member stores. But the abilities he learned in acting school helped him to beat those fears and made him a preferred figure among the many merchants he worked with.

Craig DeLongy, owner of the John Craig men’s chain in Florida, worked with Leonard for nearly three a long time. He wrote on Facebook: “Through the years, the buying office of DLS helped us grow our business with their advice, direction and good deals. Lee was soft spoken except when he was handed the mic at any of our DLS buyer meetings. Then he gave the impression of a carney barking at a carnival. Through the years, I got to enjoy Lee at many shows. Once we were at Pitti in Florence, I named him Leonardo. Once we went to Charlotte, he became Billy Lee. All the time the primary to leap on the dance floor to chop a rug — God help the feminine sales rep who was standing close. Lee you will likely be missed terribly. You were such an incredible guy.”

Derring said there aren’t any immediate survivors but he’s planning to carry a memorial service for Leonard in Recent York a while in February after the lads’s shows are over this season. A date and site haven’t yet been determined.