Dolce & Gabbana
Stefano
Gabbana was born on 14 November 1962, in Venice, Italy. Domencio Dolce was born
on 13 September 1958, in a small village in Sicily. Dolce studied fashion
design in Sicily and gained experience in his parents businesses.
Gabbana,
however, studied graphic design and gained some work experience in fashion, as
an assistant in an atelier in Milan, where the pair first met in 1980. By 1982,
they had started their first fashion consulting studio and, in 1985, they
showed their first women’s collection in Milan, winning national acclaim. The
collection was mainly homemade, and consisted of instructed designs and complicated
systems of fastenings. Inspirational figures for the collection included
Italian actresses Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani.
Later
signature designs would include corset dresses, gangster pinstripes and sexy
black suits. However, it was a visit to Sicily at the end of the 1980s which
was instrumental in emphasising their celebration of the curvaceous female
form. The designing duo next tried their luck in Japan and signed an agreement
with the Kashiyama group. In 1989 they opened their first boutique in Japan and
two years later they were presenting their first men’s collection.
Dolce and
Gabbana are now fundamentally known for wanting to make women look
“fantastically sexy”. Many of their designs are adapted from the feminist-era,
before being glamorised and modernised. They describe their style as “sweet and
sharp” and “New Millennium cool”.
They
were once quoted as saying they are mostly concerned with creating the best,
most flattering clothes and sparkling trends. D&G began achieving long
awaited awards in the 1990s and, in 1991, they were awarded the ‘Wollmark
Award’ and ‘Best Fragrance of the Year’ in 1993. By the end of the 1990s it was
reported that their sales were around $500 million per year.
They have
now become one of the world’s most successful ready-to-wear companies and are
considered Hollywood’s number one choice of designer. The couple currently
reside in a 19th Century mini-villa in Milan, with an apartment next door. They
have also recently renovated one of their properties on the French Riviera.
Hubert de Givenchy
The younger
son of Lucien Taffin de Givenchy, Marquis de Givenchy, and his wife, the former
Béatrice ("Sissi") Badin (1888–1976), Givenchy was born in Beauvais,
Oise. The Taffin family, which traces its roots to Venice, Italy (the original
surname was Taffini), had been ennobled in 1713, at which time the head of the
family became Marquis de Givenchy. After his father's death from influenza in
1930, the future fashion designer and his elder brother Jean-Claude de Givenchy
(1925–2009), who inherited the family's marquessate and eventually became the
president of Parfums Givenchy, were raised by their mother and maternal
grandmother, Marguerite Dieterle Badin (1853–1940), the widow of Jules Badin
(1843–1919), an artist who was the director of the historic Gobelins and
Beauvais tapestry factories. Artistic professions ran in the extended Badin
family.
Givenchy's
maternal great-grandfather, Jules Dieterle, was a set designer who also created
designs for the Beauvais factory, including a set of 13 designs for the Elysée
Palace. One of his great-great-grandfathers also designed sets for the Paris
Opera. Impressed by the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, young Givenchy decided he
wanted to work "somewhere in fashion design". He studied at the École
des Beaux Arts in Paris. His first designs were done for Jacques Fath in 1945,
an association that came through family members who knew Fath personally. Later
he did designs for Lucien Lelong (1946) — working alongside the still-unknown Pierre
Balmain and Christian Dior.
From
1947 to 1951 he worked for the avantgarde designer Elsa Schiaparelli. In 1952,
Givenchy opened his own design house at the Plaine Monceau in Paris. Later he
named his first collection "Bettina Graziani" for Paris's top model
at the time. His style was marked by innovativeness, contrary to the more
conservative designs by Dior. At 25, he was the youngest designer of the
progressive Paris fashion scene. His first collections were characterized by
the use of rather more cheap fabrics for financial reasons, but they always
piqued curiosity through their design. Audrey Hepburn, later the most prominent
proponent of Givenchy's fashion, and Givenchy met in 1953 during the shoot of
Sabrina.
He
went on to design almost all the wardrobe worn by her in her movies. He also
developed his first perfume collection for her (L'Interdit and Le de Givenchy).
Grace Kelly, Gloria Guinness, Dolores Guinness, Babe Paley, The Duchess of
Windsor, Mona von Bismarck and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis were other famous
customers of Givenchy's. At that time, Givenchy also met his idol, Cristobal
Balenciaga, who had also influenced Paco Rabanne's work previously. In 1954,
Givenchy's prêt-à-porter collection debuted; later a men's line was also
launched.
The House of
Givenchy was split in 1981, with the perfume line going to Veuve Clicquot,
while the fashion branch went to the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy group's
portfolio of upscale brands. As of today, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy owns
Parfum Givenchy as well. Hubert de Givenchy retired from fashion design in
1995. His chosen successor to head the Givenchy label was Dominique Sirop, but
Bernard Arnault, head of LVMH, thought Sirop was not well enough known and
appointed John Galliano instead. After a brief stint by Galliano, a five year
stay from Alexander McQueen and a term from 2001 to 2004 by Julian MacDonald,
Givenchy women's ready to wear and haute couture has been headed by Riccardo
Tisci since 2005. In January 2007, La Poste issued postage stamps for the St.
Valentine's Day designed by Givenchy. Givenchy stands 6' 6" inches tall.
Givenchy's nephew, James de Givenchy, is an American jewelry design.
Donna Karan
Donna Karan
(born October 2, 1948) is an American Jewish fashion designer and the creator
of the Donna Karan New York and DKNY clothing labels Karan was born Donna Ivy
Faske in Forest Hills, Queens, USA. She grew up in Woodmere, Long Island, New
York, with her stepfather, a tailor, and her mother, a model. Karan started
selling clothing on Cedarhurst, New York's Central Avenue at age 14. She
graduated from Hewlett High School in 1966 and then went to the Parsons School
of Design (later known as Parsons the New School for Design after it became a
division of The New School), for two years. She left to work for Anne Klein.
After leaving college, Karan worked for Anne Klein, eventually becoming head of
the Anne Klein design-team, where she remained until 1985, when she launched
her eponymous Donna Karan label.
Coco Chanel
Chanel was born on 19 August 1883 in the small town of Saumur in France. She was the second daughter of Albert Chanel and Jeanne Devolle, a market stallholder and laundrywoman respectively at the time of her birth. Her birth was declared the following day by employees of the hospital in which she was born. They, being illiterate, could not provide or confirm the correct spelling of the surname and it was recorded by the mayor François Poitou as "Chasnel". This misspelling made the tracing of her roots almost impossible for biographers when Chanel later rose to prominence. Her parents married in 1883. She had five siblings: two sisters, Julie (1882–1913) and Antoinette (born 1887) and three brothers, Alphonse (born 1885), Lucien (born 1889) and Augustin (born and died 1891). In 1895, when she was 12 years old, Chanel's mother died of tuberculosis and her father left the family. Because of this, the young Chanel spent six years in the orphanage of the Roman Catholic monastery of Aubazine, where she learned the trade of a seamstress. School vacations were spent with relatives in the provincial capital, where female relatives taught Coco to sew with more flourish than the nuns at the monastery were able to demonstrate. When Coco turned eighteen, she left the orphanage, and the ambitious young girl took off for the town of Moulins to become a cabaret singer. During this time, Chanel performed in clubs in Vichy and Moulins where she was called “Coco.” Some say that the name comes from one of the songs she used to sing, and Chanel herself said that it was a “shortened version of cocotte, the French word for ‘kept woman,” according to an article in The Atlantic.
Calvin Klein
In 1968, Klein founded Calvin Klein Limited, a coat shop in the York Hotel in New York City, with $10,000. Legend has it that a year later a buyer from Bonwit Teller got off the elevator on the wrong floor, and ended up placing a $50,000 order. It is more likely though, that Klein showed his work to Bonwit Teller staff, which led to the first Calvin Klein collection: a line of men's and women's coats featured at the New York City store. In 1969, Mr. Klein, who was later described as "the supreme master of minimalism," appeared on the cover of Voque magazine. By 1971, sportswear, classic blazers as well as lingerie were added to his women's collection. In 1973, he was awarded the Coty Award for the first time, which he received for three consecutive years, for his 74-piece womenswear collection. By 1977, annual revenues had jumped up to $30 million, and he had licenses for scarves, shoes, belts, furs, sunglasses, and sheets. Klein and Schwartz were making $4 million each. After the company signed licenses for cosmetics, jeans, and menswear, Klein's annual retail volume was estimated at $100 million. In 1978, Klein claimed sales of 200,000 pairs of his famous jeans the first week they were on the market. By 1981,Fortune Magazine figured Klein's annual income at $8.5 million a year. In the mid-1970s, he had created a designer-jeans craze by putting his name on the back pocket. The jeans were famously advertised with a commercial featuring a 15-year-old Brooke Shields cooing in 1979/80 that "nothing comes between me and my Calvins" and "I've got seven Calvins in my closet, and if they could talk, I'd be ruined." Controversial advertising, including a series of ads featuring adolescents in sexually evocative poses, has been a recurring theme for the company. Shields advertised for Klein underwear in 1984 as well. In the late 1970s, the company also made attempts to set up its own fragrance and cosmetics business, but soon withdrew from the market with big financial losses. In the 1980s, as the designer-jeans frenzy reached its all-time high, Calvin Klein introduced a highly successful line of boxer shorts for women and a men’s underwear collection which would later gross $70 million in a single year. Calvin Klein’s underwear business, promoted later in the 1990s with giant billboards showing images of pop singer "Marky Mark" Mark Wahlberg, was so successful that his underpants became generally known as "Calvins". The stunning growth continued through the early eighties. The licensing program, which brought in $24,000 when it was initiated in 1974, had royalty income of $7.3 million ten years later. That year, worldwide retail sales were estimated at more than $600 million. Klein's clothes were sold through 12,000 stores in the United States and were available in six other countries. His annual income passed $12 million. Financial problems, increased pressure from all sides, disagreements with the licensee of the menswear line and its disappointing sales as well as an enormous employee turnover both within Calvin Klein and its licensing partners led to the first rumors that Calvin Klein Industries, as the company had been known by then, was up for sale. And indeed, in late 1987, it was said that the sale of the company to Triangle Industries, a container manufacturer, had only failed because of the crashing stock market. Although the company almost faced bankruptcy in 1992, Calvin Klein managed to regain and increase the profitability of his empire throughout the later 90s, mainly through the success of its highly popular underwear and fragrance lines, as well as the ck sportswear line. Mr. Klein was named "America's Best Designer" for his minimalist all-American designs in 1993, and it came as a surprise in 1999 when it was announced that CKI was again up for sale. Planning to expand its business, the company had been approached by two luxury goods companies, LVMH and Pinault Printemps Redoute. to join Calvin Klein, but nothing resulted. Other potentials like Tommy HilfigerCorp. and Italy's Holding di Partecipazioni proved to be similar disappointments because of CKI's steep price tag of supposedly $1 billion. After seven months and no potential buyer, Mr. Klein announced that his empire was not on the market any more. The company would never manage to go public, which had supposedly been Mr. Klein's plan once. In June 2008, Calvin Klein started to sponsor America's Next Top Male Model, allowing the winner to embark on a 100,000 dollar contract as well as a runway show, as a bonus, to launch their career.
Thomas Jacob "Tommy"
Hilfiger
Thomas Jacob
"Tommy" Hilfiger (born March 24, 1951) is an American fashion
designer and founder of the brand Tommy Hilfiger. Hilfiger was born and raised
in Elmira, New York. The second of nine children, he grew up in an
Irish-American family; he claims direct descent from Scottish poet Robert
Burns. His parents originally intended for him to be an engineer. He attended
Elmira Free Academy for high school. Rather than furthering his education, he
started to work in retail at the age of 18. Hilfiger would go to New York City
to buy jeans and bell-bottom pants, which he customized and resold at a local
downtown Elmira store, Brown's. He later opened his own store, named The
People's Place, around the block in downtown Elmira. Although the store was a
hot spot for teens with frequent contests and live DJ appearances, there were
often more people hanging out than shopping. Over the years, a number of stores
closed in downtown Elmira as shopping traffic shifted to the new Arnot Mall in
Horseheads, New York. It wasn't long before The People's Place became another
casualty. After seven years, The People's Place went bankrupt, when Hilfiger
was 25. The site of the original store has since been demolished to make room
for First Arena, home of the Elmira Jackals Hockey
Guccio Gucci
Guccio Gucci
(26 March 1881 – 2 January 1953) was an Italian business man and fashion
designer, is the founder of The House of Gucci and son of an Italian merchant
from the country’s northern manufacturing region A craftsman, he founded the
House of Gucci in Florence in 1906 as a small family owned leather saddlery
shop. He began selling leather bags to horsemen in the 1920s. As a young man,
he rapidly built a reputation for quality, hiring the best craftsmen he could
find to work in his atelier. In 1938, Gucci expanded his business to Rome. Soon
his one-man business turned into a family-business, when his sons Aldo, Vasco,
Ugo and Rodolfo joined the company. In 1951 Gucci opened their store in Milan
and two years later, the company expanded overseas with the opening of the
Manhattan store. For his final years, he lived near Rusper, West Sussex,
England.
Miuccia Bianchi Prada
Miuccia
Bianchi Prada (born Maria Bianchi in May 10, 1949 is an Italian fashion
designer. In 1978, she inherited the Prada SpA business from her mother, and
she and her husband Patrizio Bertelli led the company's expansion into
ready-to-wear apparell. The youngest granddaughter of Prada founder Mario
Prada, she has a Ph.D. in Political Science. Prada has long been a financial
supporter of art. She recently organized a traveling, art-gallery style display
of many skirts she has designed. The exhibition was called "Waist
Down". Prada built her family's modest luggage brand into a company worth
billions. She is the younger daughter of Luigi "Gino" Bianchi and his
wife, the former Luisia Prada. She was adopted in the 1980s by her mother's
sister, an act which changed her surname to Prada.Her maternal. grandfather,
Mario Prada, and his brother, Martino, founded the family luxury leather goods
company in Milan in 1913; called Fratelli Prada, it was originally a small
luxury goods and accessories shop. In 1978, a reluctant Miuccia assumed the
reins from her mother, after completing a PhD in Political Science. She was an
unlikely successor, having spent the last five years studying and performing
mime at Milan's Teatro Piccolo, being a paid-up member of the Communist party
and champion of women's rights in seventies' Milan. But she soon proved her
worth. In 1985, she designed a new line of black, unlabelled, hard-wearing, but
finely-woven nylon handbags that immediately became must-haves for the fashion
cognoscenti, seen hanging off the arm of the likes of Jerry Hall and Marie
Helvin. With retail prices starting at around £250, a bootlegging industry
quickly sprang up, making the authentic articles even more desirable. More
importantly, Prada bags were established as the accessory of choice for
supermodels and fashion editors the world over. Prada launched her eponymous
ready-to-wear collection for autumn/winter 1989 to critical acclaim. The plain,
almost austere lines of her designs provided a stark contrast to the overtly
sensual designs of other labels of the time and one admiring fashion journalist
described Prada's clothes as "uniforms for the slightly
disenfranchised". In 1992, she debuted the less expensive bridge line Miu
Miu (Miuccia's nickname), inspired by her personal wardrobe of earthier,
hippyish garments in natural fabrics and colours. Clean and stylish designs,
fine materials and exquisite craftsmanship conspired to win Prada a Council of
Fashion Designers of America International Award in 1993. A year later, she
showed in New York for the first time and opened her London boutique. She now
shows for Prada and Miu Miu twice a year in Milan. Miuccia met her husband and
business partner Patrizio Bertelli at the same time she took the helm of the
family company. "If I hadn't met him, I probably would have given up - or
at least not been able to do what I have done," she once said. It was
under Bertelli's sway that the design house started making moves towards
becoming an international conglomerate to rival LVMH in 1999/2000, adding such
top flight labels as Fendi, Helmut Lang, Jil Sander and Azzedine Alaia to its
portfolio of brands.
Louis Vuitton
Louis
Vuitton (August 4,1821 – February 27, 1892), eponymous founder of the company,
was born in the department of Jura, France. In 1835, he moved to Paris. The
trip from his hometown to Paris was over 400 kilometers (249 mi), and he
traveled the distance by foot. On his way there, he picked up a series of odd
jobs to pay for his journey. There, he became an apprentice Layetier to
prominent households. Because of his well established reputation in his fields,
Napoleon III of France appointed Vuitton as Layetier to his wife, Empress
Eugénie de Montijo. Through his experience with French royalty, he developed
advanced knowledge of what made a good traveling case. It was then that he
began to design his own luggage, setting the foundations for LV Co.
Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Henri
Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent, known as Yves Saint Laurent (French pronunciation:
; 1 August 1936 – 1 June 2008),was an Algerian-born French fashion designer who
was considered one of the greatest names in French fashion in the 20th century.
In 1985, Caroline Rennolds Milbank wrote, "The most consistently
celebrated and influential designer of the past twenty-five years, Yves Saint
Laurent can be credited with both spurring the couture's rise from its sixties
ashes and with finally rendering ready-to-wear reputable".
Giorgio Armani
Giorgio
Armani (born 11 July 1934) is an Italian fashion designer, particularly noted
for his menswear. He is known today for his clean, tailored lines. He formed his
company, Armani, in 1975, and by 2001 was acclaimed as the most successful
designer to come out of Italy, with an annual turnover of $1.6 billion and a
personal fortune of $5.3 billion. Early years Armani was born in the northern
Italian town of Piacenza, where he was raised with two other siblings. His
father, Ugo, was a transport executive, and his mother, Maria, was a homemaker.
Armani aspired to a career in medicine after reading A. J. Cronin's The
Citadel, and enrolled at the University of Bologna[3]. In 1953, after two years
of studies, he was called to military service, which included working in a
military hospital. The experience convinced him that he was not cut out to be a
doctor.
Roberto Cavalli
Roberto
Cavalli was born in Florence, Tuscany. His grandfather, Giuseppe Rossi, was a
member of the Macchiaioli Movement, whose work is exhibited in the Uffizi
Gallery. Cavalli decided to enroll at the local Art Institute, concentrating in
textile print.
While still
a student, he made a series of flower prints on knit that caught the attention
of major Italian hosiery factories. In the early 1970s, he invented and
patented a revolutionary printing procedure on leather, and he started creating
patchworks of different materials. He debuted these techniques in Paris,
immediately getting commissions from the likes of Hermès and Pierre Cardin. At
age 30, he presented his first namesake collection at the Salon for
Prêt-à-Porter in Paris.
He
brought it to the catwalks of the Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti in Florence, and
later on those of Milano Collezioni jeans made of printed denim, intarsia
leathers, brocade and wild prints. He then opened his first boutique in 1972 in
Saint-Tropez. In 1980 Roberto Cavalli married Eva Düringer, who has been his
lifelong companion and business partner. In Milan in 1994 Cavalli presented the
first sand-blasted jeans.
By December
of the same year, he had opened boutiques in Saint Barth, in the French
Caribbean, followed by others in Venice and Saint-Tropez. Besides the main
line, which is sold in over fifty countries worldwide, Roberto Cavalli designs
RC Menswear as well as the youth aimed line Just Cavalli, launched in 1998 and
comprising today men’s wear, women’s wear and accessories, eyewear, watches,
perfumes, underwear and beachwear.
There is
also the Angels & Devils Children Collection, the Class line, two underwear
collections, shoes, eyewear, watches and perfumes. In 2002 Cavalli opened his
first café-store in Florence, revamping it with his signature animal prints. This
was shortly followed by the opening in Milan of the Just Cavalli café at Torre
Branca and another boutique on Via Spiga.
It was
reported in April 2008 that Cavalli had put his business up for sale. quote is
from wikipedia. Gianni Versace Gianni Versace was born in Reggio Calabria,
Italy, on December 2, 1946, where he grew up with his older brother Santo and
younger sister Donatella, along with their father and dressmaker mother,
Francesca. An older sister, Tina, died at the age of 12 from an improperly
treated tetanus infection. Versace began his apprenticeship at a young age,
helping his mother find precious stones and gold braid with which to embroider
dresses. He studied architecture before moving to Milan at the age of 26 to
work in fashion design. In the mid-1970s, his knits drew the attention of
head-hunters at Genny and Callaghan.
Complice
hired him to design their leather and suede collections, and a few years later,
encouraged by his success, Versace presented his first signature collection for
women at the Palazzo della Permanente Art Museum of Milan.
His first
menswear collection followed in September of the same year. After presenting
his menswear collection he joined Jorge Saud, who would later also become a
partner with Giorgio Armani. The first boutique was opened in Milan's Via della
Spiga in 1978. He was influenced by Andy Warhol, Ancient Roman and Greek art as
well as modern abstract art.
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