Tatiana du PLESSIX LIBERMAN was the leading hat designer for Saks Fifth Avenue for 20 years. Mrs. LIBERMAN, whose original name was Tatiana YACOVLEFF, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on May 7, 1906, into a professional family that found sanctuary in Paris after the Bolshevik Revolution. She studied painting and sculpture, but also learned millinery to earn a living. She was married to a French diplomat, Bertrand de PLESSIX, from 1929 until 1940 when he was killed by the Germans in their conquest of France. She fled to New York with their daughter in 1941 and began designing hats for Henri BENDEL. Within a year, she joined Saks Fifth Avenue and became head of its custom hat salon, designing with the signature Tatiana du PLESSIX until its Salon Moderne closed in 1963. The designs were often praised by fashion reporters as irresistible. In 1950, Virginia POPE of The New York Times hailed the milliner as "a perfectionist" in assembling both materials and colors and for artful originality in flattering women of many types. The 1951 collection, Miss POPE wrote, excells in "both wit and wisdom." In 1942, the designer married Alexander LIBERMAN, an artist and editorial director of Conde Nast Publications. Mr. LIBERMAN was an adolescent friend and fellow Russian emigre in Paris. They kept close ties with friends from the Paris days and later with prominent Soviet artists who settled in the West, including Joseph BRODSKY and Mikhail BARYSHNIKOV. The couple's homes were also gathering places for friends like Salvador DALI, John GUNTHER, Marlene DIETRICH and Christian DIOR.