From her earliest years, Rose Cherubini created dresses from any available fabric, even if she had to borrow some from a curtain rod.
“I lived in Somerville as a girl, I had friends and we just teased each other,’’ she told the Globe in 2013, when an exhibition of her work was shown at the Samson Projects gallery in Boston after she turned 100. “My family was more or less in the business of clothing, and my uncle was a dress designer. We always had a lot of fabric, so I’d go upstairs and whip up a little dress and come downstairs and show my girlfriends. I even used curtains my mother had in the window.’’
Mrs. Cherubini, who was 102 when she died Feb. 7 in her Wareham home, crafted wedding gowns and other formal wear for decades. Long before shows like “Project Runway,’’ she designed a wedding gown live on a TV talk show. Asked another time to create a dress from burlap, she produced one that was shocking pink, festooned with jewels, and was featured in Life magazine.
“She was a maker,’’ said her granddaughter Nicole, an artist in East Chatham, N.Y., in a eulogy at Mrs. Cherubini’s funeral last week. “I think about her hands that have known and done so much – the knowledge and intelligence they held, while maintaining freedom and exploration.’’
Her grandmother’s “choices were continuous and the combinations new and challenging,’’ she said. “She painted dresses. She made dresses out of uncommon materials. She made Christmas tree dresses.’’
During her years running stores in Quincy and in Boston on Newbury and Clarendon streets, Mrs. Cherubini rose before dawn and all her life loved the colors of sunrises and sunsets. In her work could be found “rich golden yellows, her never-ending array of pinks from pale to fuchsia to magenta, and glorious red,’’ Nicole said.
Though her work was celebrated in fashion shows until she was 90 and in a gallery when she was 100, she never thought of her gowns as art. “No, completely not,’’ she told the Globe in the 2013 interview. “I was just doing it because I loved doing it. It was a personal thing really. But I’m very happy that other people see them that way. What I see is the hard work, and my love of doing this.’’
Mrs. Cherubini, whose gowns can be found at online sites, could not begin to count how many brides she outfitted.
“I kept pictures of them in a box,’’ she said in the Globe interview. “I brought it here and stored it in my boathouse. We had Hurricane Bob at the time. The storm hit the boathouse, and it all went to water. I would say a lot. I did a lot. I worked hard.’’
Born Rose Santeusanio, she was one of four siblings whose father died when they were young. The family lived in Somerville before moving to Quincy, where many relatives lived nearby.
Her mother raised the children and she would later describe her father “as a part-time artist, in wrought iron,’’ said her son Julian of Boston. “He also was one of the first photographers.’’
In 1933, she married Columbo Cherubini, who eventually ran his family’s trucking and delivery business, Granite City Express. They lived in Quincy until moving to Wareham at the end of the 1970s. He died in 1987 at 81.
Mrs. Cherubini didn’t go to school to study fashion. “It just came naturally,’’ she told the Globe. “I needed to do it my way. I always wanted a shop, and I was in Quincy at that time. I just made up my mind. I just had to have a dress shop.’’ Her first boutique, which bore her name, opened in Quincy in 1950, according to her family.
“I think she was fortunate in that there were many relatives in close proximity at Quincy Point,’’ her son Julian said. “Therefore she had time to pursue her interests.’’
In 1960, she opened a shop on Newbury Street, and then became a buyer for another company a decade later. In the mid-1970s, while in her early 60s, she went out on her own again, this time with a Clarendon Street shop.
“Rose was a fierce feminist,’’ Nicole said in her eulogy. “She forged her own path and made a space for herself and her family, always attempting to give to her sons all that she could so that they, too, could do anything.’’
Launching multiple businesses at a time when it was less common for women to do so “was not an easy task,’’ said Nicole, who added that her grandmother “did this with grace, through work, and by not questioning – just doing it. I believe she made change because she could not fathom why these dichotomies even existed.’’
On her brides, meanwhile, Mrs. Cherubini lavished attention. “She went to the church where they were getting married and dressed them there,’’ her son said. “I still run into people who say, ‘Your mother made my gown.’ ’’
A funeral Mass was said at St. John’s Church in Quincy for Mrs. Cherubini, who, in addition to her son Julian and granddaughter Nicole, leaves another son, Jon of Fort Lee, N.J.; three other granddaughters; four great-grandchildren; and a great-great-granddaughter.
Mrs. Cherubini featured her work in fashion shows from Greater Boston to New York City, including a final one in Bourne a dozen years ago.
Her creations included what she called the “orbit gown’’ for astronaut John Glenn’s wife, Annie, after he was the first American to orbit the earth.
“She had a way of creating an elegance of aesthetics. Everything she did was on this grand, majestic level. She did everything completely and fully,’’ Nicole recalled in an interview. “Whenever I’d call her, we would always talk about the sunset or the sunrise. She was always noticing the beauty of the land.’’
And while Mrs. Cherubini was known for her gowns, particularly her wedding dresses, she also made rugs, stained glass, and jewelry. During her years running boutiques, “she would get up at 4 in the morning and go to work and make those dresses, and she always had her own hobby going,’’ Nicole said. “She loved to work. It’s almost as if working made her happier. She was pure strength.’’
That strength never seemed to wane, Nicole added. “I remember one day she said she was really at her prime when she was 80 and was jump-roping every day.
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.
