Clorinda Gorman, a colorful resident of East Hampton for many years, died on Friday at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. She was 94 and had been in declining health.
For most of her working career Ms. Gorman had her own interior design business, using her professional name, Clorinda Whitcomb. Her work, noted for its bold use of color and pattern, was reflected in her dress and personal style. One friend said she was always in costume. She was a lively personality, full of irrepressible enthusiasm, eager to offer suggestions about travel, restaurants, and theater.
Born in Utica, N.Y., on May 28, 1928, to Richard Alexander and the former Louisa Rosa, she entered Parsons School of Design in New York City at age 18. She often said that when her parents took her to New York at age 12 she determined that she would leave Utica for the city as soon as she could. She made many lifelong friends at Parsons, which at the time was full of students studying on the G.I. Bill.
Her first job was in the interior design department at Bloomingdale’s, and a few years later she joined the McMillen interior design firm in New York. She left to establish a design department at the BBD&O ad agency for its home furnishings clients. In 1957 the home furnishings department of The New York Times recruited her. After three years she left to study interior design and architecture in Europe and at the Attingham School in England.
Returning to New York in 1961, Ms. Gorman established her own interior design business and continued to work at that for the rest of her life. For several years in the late 1960s she commuted monthly to Washington, D.C., as editor of the home furnishings section of the Sunday Washington Post.
Her love of travel made her familiar with the principal cities of Europe. She considered it a poor year if she did not get to Paris at least once. But she also knew less well-traveled countries including Syria, Jordan, Israel, Yemen, and Peru. She had also been to China, Japan, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Kenya, Panama, Tanzania, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. On one trip she roughed it in a truck with a group of young men and women half her age, pitching tents every night, cooking over wood fires while searching through Rwanda, Zaire, and Burundi for the mountain gorilla. At one point a native guide grabbed her overalls to pull her back when her fascination with a gorilla led her to creep too close.
She and Edward Gorman were married on Nov. 20, 1971. In 1977 the couple moved to San Francisco, where her husband became chairman of Joseph Magnin, a chain of fashion stores. She continued her design business there and also served as a member of the board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the World Affairs Council, and the International Hospitality Center.
Returning to East Hampton in 1980, she resumed her own interior design business. She was a board member at Guild Hall and an active member of the Ladies Village Improvement Society.
Her husband died in 2010. Ms. Gorman is survived by a brother, Richard Alexander of Watertown, N.Y., a niece, Michelle Czerw of San Antonio, and her late husband’s nephews, Andrew, David, and Eric Gorman.
It was her wish that contributions in her memory be sent to the East Hampton Library at 159 Main Street.
