PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: fashion design
French fashion designer
Jean Paul Gaultier is a French fashion designer whose iconoclastic collections in the late 20th and early 21st centuries celebrated androgyny, blended street styles with haute couture, and juxtaposed other...
Italian fashion designer
Miuccia Prada is an Italian fashion designer best known as the head designer at the Prada fashion house. She is renowned for using minimalist designs to achieve a traditional style with modern influence....
Spanish fashion designer
Manolo Blahnik is a Spanish fashion designer best known for his signature line of high-end women’s footwear. Blahnik was born the eldest of two children into an affluent family. His Czech father’s family...
American fashion designer
Marc Jacobs is an American fashion designer renowned for his sartorial interpretations of trends in popular culture, perhaps most notably his “grunge” collection, which was credited with launching the...
French designer
Coco Chanel was a French fashion designer who ruled Parisian haute couture for almost six decades. Her elegantly casual designs inspired women to abandon the complicated, uncomfortable clothes—such as...
British fashion designer
Alexander McQueen was a British designer known for his groundbreaking clothes, shocking catwalk shows, and precise tailoring. McQueen grew up in London’s East End; he was the youngest of six children of...
American fashion designer
Zac Posen is an American fashion designer best known for his glamorous evening gowns and cocktail dresses. Posen was raised in the SoHo neighbourhood of Lower Manhattan. His father, Stephen Posen, was...
Dominican-American fashion designer
Oscar de la Renta was a Dominican-born American fashion designer whose work, blending European luxury with American ease, helped define standards of elegant dressing among socialites, U.S. first ladies,...
Cypriot-British fashion designer
Hussein Chalayan is a Cypriot-British fashion designer best known for infusing intellectual concepts and artistic elements into his designs and shows. Chalayan was born to Muslim parents and attended Turk...
American fashion designer
Ralph Lauren is an American fashion designer who, by developing his brand around the image of an elite American lifestyle, built one of the world’s most successful fashion empires. Lifshitz grew up in...
American author, fashion designer, and socialite
Gloria Vanderbilt was an American socialite, artist, author, actress, and designer of textiles and fashion who was often in the public eye for her social life and professional exploits. Born into the prominent...
British fashion designer
John Galliano is a British fashion designer known for his ready-to-wear and haute-couture collections for such fashion houses as Christian Dior, Givenchy, and Maison Margiela. Galliano, the son of a Spanish...
American designer
Donna Karan is an American designer who is internationally acclaimed for the simplicity and comfort of her clothes. Faske’s father was a tailor, and her mother was a model and a showroom sales representative...
American fashion designer
Bill Blass was an American designer who helped define the relaxed, pared-down elegance that would characterize American fashion in the late 20th century. Blass left home at age 17 to attend the Parsons...
American fashion designer
Thom Browne is an American fashion designer known for his reconceptualization of the classic men’s suit. He became widely recognized for his womenswear after U.S. first lady Michelle Obama wore one of...
Italian fashion designer
Stefano Pilati is an Italian fashion designer who was the creative director (2004–12) at the storied house of fashion, Yves Saint Laurent (YSL), and head of design (2013–16) at Ermenegildo Zegna. As an...
Italian fashion designer
Giorgio Armani is an Italian fashion designer whose signature style of relaxed yet luxurious ready-to-wear and elegant, intricately beaded evening wear helped introduce ease and streamlined modernity to...
American fashion designer
Rogan Gregory is an American fashion designer and sculptor known for his environmentally and socially conscious clothing lines. He was perhaps best known as the creative director (2005–07) of Edun. Gregory...
Japanese fashion designer
Issey Miyake was a Japanese fashion designer who was known for combining Eastern and Western elements in his work. He also had a popular line of fragrances that included L’Eau d’Issey. Miyake studied graphic...
French designer
Yves Saint Laurent was a French fashion designer noted for his popularization of women’s trousers for all occasions. After completing his secondary education in Oran, Algeria, Saint Laurent left for Paris...
British fashion designer
Vivienne Westwood was a British fashion designer known for her provocative clothing. With her partner, Malcolm McLaren, she extended the influence of the 1970s punk music movement into fashion. She was...
English fashion designer
Sarah Burton is an English fashion designer who was creative director for the Alexander McQueen label (2010– ). Heard studied art at Manchester Polytechnic before attending London’s Central Saint Martin’s...
Belgian fashion designer
Raf Simons is a Belgian fashion designer who worked for various labels, notably serving as creative director of Jil Sander (2005–12), as artistic director of Christian Dior (2012–15), as chief creative...
British fashion designer
Stella McCartney is a British fashion designer known primarily for her fur-free and leather-free apparel as well as for her celebrity-studded clientele. Stella McCartney was the daughter of Sir Paul McCartney...
French designer
Christian Louboutin is a French fashion designer who is best known for his high-end shoes, which are identifiable by their brilliant red soles. As a teenage apprentice in the dressing rooms of the Folies-Bergère,...
American artist
Nick Cave is an American artist best known for his wearable mixed-media constructions known as Soundsuits, which act simultaneously as fashion, sculpture, and noisemaking performance art. Cave began exploring...
American couturiere
Pauline Trigère was a French-born American couturiere whose award-winning design work was especially popular in the United States in the 1950s and ’60s. Trigère was the daughter of a tailor. She early...
American designer
Calvin Klein is an American fashion designer noted for his womenswear, menswear, jeans, cosmetics and perfumes, bed and bath linens, and other collections. Klein studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology...
Taiwan-born fashion designer
Jason Wu is a Taiwanese-born fashion designer known for his sophisticated and well-crafted creations. In the early 1990s Wu’s family moved from Taiwan to Vancouver. His mother hired a fashion student there...
British fashion designer
Mary Quant was an English fashion designer of youth-oriented fashions, responsible in the 1960s for the “Chelsea look” of England and the widespread popularity of the miniskirt and “hot pants.” Quant attended...
French designer
Christian Dior was a French fashion designer whose New Look style—characterized by ultrafeminine and highly sculptured clothing—dominated fashion in the decade following World War II. His eponymous fashion...
American fashion designer
Liz Claiborne was an American fashion designer who revolutionized the women’s apparel industry in the U.S. as the head designer and cofounder (with her husband, Arthur Ortenberg, and partners, Leonard...
Italian fashion designer
Frida Giannini is an Italian fashion designer who was the creative director of the world-renowned Gucci fashion house from 2006 to 2015. After studying at Rome’s Academy of Costume and Fashion (Accademia...
French fashion designer
Hubert de Givenchy was a French fashion designer noted for his couture and ready-to-wear designs, especially those he created for the actress Audrey Hepburn. Givenchy studied art at the École des Beaux-Arts...
Spanish-Italian multimedia artist [1871-1949]
Mariano Fortuny was a painter, inventor, photographer, and fashion designer best known for his dress and textile designs. Fortuny was the son of a Spanish genre painter, Mariano Fortuny. His father died...
Italian fashion designer
Emilio Pucci, marquis di Barsento was an Italian fashion designer and politician. Pucci, who came from a wealthy, aristocratic Florentine family, was educated for a diplomatic career. He earned a Ph.D....
British designer
Laura Ashley was a British designer known for her traditional, Victorian-style prints on natural fabrics, which she used to create household furnishings, linens, and women’s clothing. By the time of her...
English designer
Charles Frederick Worth was a pioneer fashion designer and one of the founders of Parisian haute couture. In 1845 Worth left London, where he had worked in a yard-goods firm, for Paris, where he was employed...
French couturier
Pierre Balmain was a French couturier who in 1945 founded a fashion house that made his name a byword for elegance. His clients included the Duchess of Windsor, the Queen of Belgium, and many of the leading...
French fashion designer
André Courrèges was a dress designer who first made a reputation in the Parisian fashion world of the 1960s for futuristic, youth-oriented styles. Courrèges wished to be an artist, but his father directed...
French-Italian fashion designer
Elsa Schiaparelli was an Italian-born fashion designer who established an important couture house in Paris. She was famous for her Surrealist fashions of the 1930s and for her witty accessories, such as...
French fashion designer
Paul Poiret was a French couturier, the most fashionable dress designer of pre-World War I Paris. Poiret was particularly noted for his Neoclassical and Orientalist styles, for advocating the replacement...
Spanish designer
Cristóbal Balenciaga was a Spanish dress designer who created elegant ball gowns and other classic designs. Balenciaga began seriously studying dressmaking at the age of 10, when the death of his father,...
American fashion designer
Rudi Gernreich was an Austrian-born American avant-garde fashion designer of the 1960s. Gernreich immigrated to the United States in 1938 and, from 1942 to 1948, was a dancer and costume designer for the...