Barbara Mary Quant was born in London, England. From a young age, she was prone to fashion, making her own clothes in her style. After graduating from Blackheath High School, she wanted to study fashion, but her parents disapproved, so instead, Quant studied illustration and art education at Goldsmiths College, receiving her degree in 1953. That year, she met her future husband and business partner, Alexander Plunket Greene. After school, Quant apprenticed couture milliner and began to design and manufacture clothes. In 1955, at 25, she opened her first boutique, Bazaar, on Kings Road, and two years later, she opened her second Bazaar store in Knightsbridge. Within a few years, her bold clothing style caught the attention of both buyers and the media, and in 1962 an American manufacturer purchased some of her dress designs, expanding her brand in Europe and the US. In her designs, Quant broke the standard styles of the time. She withdrew from the post-war practical clothing and used youth as inspiration, creating mature and sexier versions of the dancing wear of girls, with short pleated skirts, white anklets, and ankle-strap shoes. Although she didn’t invent the silhouette, Quant is best associated with the miniskirt, which she improved and popularized with her designs, wanting to make women clothing less restrictive, allowing them freedom of movement and the feeling of empowerment and liberation. Her version of the short shorts, or hotpants, also became a sensation and was recognized as a British fashion icon. Her uniqueness and innovation were not only in her designs but also in how she sold them. In her boutiques, Quant played music and offered drinks so people would come and hang out there for hours as if it was a club. Another way she differed herself from the standard department stores and the inaccessible high-class designer stores was by the boutiques’ window displays, placing models in quirky poses, drawing the pass-byers’ attention. In 1966, at 36, Quant launched Mary Quants Cosmetics, introducing the “paintbox” – a ready-to-use makeup pallet. A few years later, she expanded into household goods and interior and textile design, claiming to invent the duvet. In 2000, at 70, Quant resigned as director of Mary Quant Ltd, and the company was moved under her Japanese licensees’ ownership that has been running it ever since. In her later years, she resided in Surrey. She died at the age of 93. Read more...

Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel was born in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, France. She grew up poor, and at 11, after her mother died, she and two of her sisters were sent to an orphanage. There, she learned to sew, a skill that would serve her later in life. At 18, she started working as a seamstress while trying to launch a career as a singer, performing in cabaret shows. During this time, she received the nickname, Coco. At 23, she began a relationship with Etienne Balsan, who introduced her to the “rich life” and high society circles. She began working as a milliner and hat designer at the time. Two years later, she left Balsan for one of his friends, Arthur “Boy” Capel, who encouraged her to cultivate her talent and passion, and financed her first millinery shop at 21 rue Cambon, Paris, which opened in 1910. Two years later, she opened a boutique in Deauville, where, in addition to hats, she sold simple sportswear made of jersey, a fabric that until then was used to make men’s underwear. Her revolutionary clothing drew the attention of several well-known actresses, who helped build her reputation. In 1915, at 32, Chanel opened her first Couture House in Biarritz and launched her first Haute Couture collection. The following year, she paid Capel back his original investment, made only three years before. In 1918, she purchased a building in 31 rue Cambon, Paris, and set up her Couture House as well as a boutique, workshop, and several salons. By then, Chanel was a popular figure in the Parisian art world and designed costumes for the Ballets Russes. Under the agenda that “luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury,” Chanel’s designs were always simple, comfortable, and yet luxurious, and by that, she revolutionized the fashion industry. In 1921, Chanel collaborated with the perfumer Ernst Beaux and launched her signature scent, Chanel No. 5 – the first designer perfume. She manufactured and distributed the fragrance with the help of Pierre Wertheimer of the Bourjois cosmetics company and Théophile Bader of the Galeries Lafayette department store in a controversial deal that left her with only 10% of the profits. She continued to expand the Chanel brand, adding a makeup collection in 1924 and introducing the Chanel collarless skirt suit and the iconic little black dress in the next couple of years. Her designs changed the face of fashion by removing the traditional corsets and confining garments and borrowing men’s wear elements. In the early 1930s, she was invited to Hollywood to design costumes for various films and soon became the private designer of A-list actresses such as Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. During WW2, Chanel lived in the Hotel Ritz in Paris and became associated with a Nazi military officer. This connection tainted her reputation, and she closed her business for the next 15 years. In 1954, at 71, she reopened her Couture House and introduced several new styles, such as the bell-bottomed pants and the braided cardigan jacket, maintaining her agenda of a clean, classic luxurious look. Although she received harsh reviews, the shoppers thought otherwise, and her clothing returned to be a must-have in every fashionista’s closet. In the next two decades, Chanel continued to design new and innovative clothes, fragrances, and accessories, including bags, watches, and jewelry. She kept on running her brand until she died at the age of 88. Read more...

Elizabeth J. Magie was born in Macomb, Illinois, to an abolitionist family. In her 20s, she moved to the Washington, DC area, where she worked as a typist and a stenographer at the Dead Letter Office. She wrote short stories and poetry, performed on stage, and did comedic routines. In 1893, at 26, she patented her first invention for typewriting machines to make the paper move through the rollers more easily. Magie was an active feminist, and as a single woman, her focus was the unavoidable dependency on men. She, as a stenographer, earned only $10 a week, which was not enough for her to support herself without a man. To bring attention to the matter, she bought an advertisement to auction herself as an American woman slave who needs a husband to own her. In this wording, Magie pointed out the status of women and black people in the country, indicating that the only free people are white men. Another cause close to her heart was Georgism. Based on the anti-monopolist theories of politician and economist Henry George, Georgism is a single tax movement that advocated for the government to create a universal land tax based on the size, location, and usefulness of the land instead of taxing income. It also stated that services such as telegraphs, railroads, and utilities should be owned by the public rather than private companies. So the tax burden will be on the wealthy landlords instead of the laborers. These beliefs inspired her to create a board game that trains economic theories, and she invented the Landlord’s Game. In 1904, 38 years old Magie got a patent for The Landlord’s Game. In its first version, the game could be played in two ways – a monopolist set up (named Monopoly) in which the goal was to own industries, create monopolies, and crush the opponents; and an anti-monopolist set up (named Prosperity) in which the goal was to build products and gain wealth through interaction and collaboration with the opponents. The game was innovative in various ways. It was the first to be played on a circular board when all game boards were linear. It was the first to encourage social and competitive interaction among the players, and as a tool of education, it taught the principles of economics to its players. The Landlord’s Game had great successes among Magie’s friends, so she tried to sell it to the game manufacturing company the Parker Brother, which turned her down twice for being “too political.” In 1906, she moved to Chicago, where she co-founded The Economic Game Co to manufacture and distribute the game by herself. The patent on the game had expired in 1921, and other versions became popular in the Northeast and Mid-West, especially among college students at Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as among Quakers and middle-class families. In 1933, three decades after Magie patented The Landlord’s Game, Parker Brothers released Monopoly, supposedly invented by a man named Charles Darrow. Based solely on the monopolist-capitalist aspects of Magie’s original game, this version became a household must, selling 20,000 sets a week in its first year, earning Darrow and Parker Brothers millions of dollars. In 1936, at the age of 70, Magie interviewed for The Washington Post and The Evening Star, criticized Darrow and its appropriation of her idea, saying that the game cost her more than she made from it, merely 500$. Monopoly grew into the world’s most popular board game over the years, while Magie died without receiving any credit for her creation at 82. In 1973, Ralph Anspach, an economics professor, was sued by The Parker Brothers after developing the Anti-Monopol game to shed light on monopolies’ dangers. In his research for the case, he discovered Magie’s story and the true origin of the game. 25 years after she passed away, she finally received her deserved recognition. Read more...

María Carolina Josefina Pacanins y Niño was born in Caracas, Venezuela to a high class and wealthy family. In 1957, at age 18, she married Guillermo Behrens Tello and had two daughters. They divorced after seven years, and she returned to live with her parents. In 1964, at the age of 25, she began to work as a publicist at the Caracas boutique of the Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci. In 1968, she married Reinaldo Herrera Guevara, a TV morning news host and the 5th Marquis of Torre Casa. The couple had a lavish lifestyle, traveling around the world and spending time with royals and artists, such as Princess Margaret, Andy Warhol, and Mick and Bianca Jagger. Herrera became known for her dramatic style and fashion choices and regularly appeared on the Best Dressed lists. In 1980, Herrera moved with her family to NYC. Encouraged by her friend and Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, Diana Vreeland, Herrera began to design clothes, presenting 20 dresses at a friends’ apartment. In the following year, at the age of 42, Herrera debuted her first collection at the Manhattan’s Metropolitan Club, introducing the world the padded shoulders and big elaborate sleeves, which became the trademark of the 1980s fashion. Her designs were popular, and buyers wanted to purchase her entire line. Within a few months, she opened a showroom, and her designs were famous for their glamorous and sophisticated style. In 1986, Herrera’s success turned global after designing the wedding dress for Caroline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s daughter. Herrera expanded her brand, and in addition to custom-made dresses, she offered a ready-to-wear line and bridal wear. In 1988, Herrera launched her first perfume, followed by eyewear and accessory lines. In 1995, at 56, she sold her label, remaining as the creative director of the “Herrera” group. In this position, she introduced the CH Carolina Herrera brand and opened the group’s first store in NYC, soon branching abroad. By 2012 there were 18 Carolina Herrera boutiques worldwide, selling the brand in 280 stores in more than 100 countries. In 2018, at the age of 79, Herrera stepped down as creative director and took on the role of global brand ambassador. Read more...

Maya Ying Lin was born in Athens, Ohio. Both of her parents were scholar artists who fled China in the late 1940s. Her father was a ceramist and dean of the Ohio University College of Fine Arts, and her mother was a poet and a professor of literature at Ohio University. Her creative tendencies were encouraged from a young age, creating art in her father’s ceramics studio and taking bronze casting classes at Ohio University. Lin studied architecture and sculpture at Yale University, earning her Bachelor of Arts in 1981. In her senior year, 21 years old Lin won a public competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the National Mall in Washington, DC. Picked out anonymously of 1,422 submissions, her design was a V-shaped black granite wall inscribed with the names of approximately 58,000 fallen soldiers. One side of the wall is pointing toward the Lincoln Memorial and the other toward the Washington Monument. The minimal design creates a woundlike opening in the earth which symbolizes the pain caused by the war. Contrasting the traditional commemorative designs, the memorial aroused controversy for reflecting a negative attitude towards the war. After defending her design before the US Congress, Lin compromised and added a traditional bronze statue of three soldiers with a flag standing near the memorial. After the dedication on the Veterans Day of 1982, Lin returned to academia, beginning her graduate studies in architecture at Harvard University. In 1986, at the age of 27, she received her master’s degree from Yale and opened a studio in NYC. Two years later, she designed the Civil Rights Movement Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Women’s Table in Yale. In the 1990s, Lin began to work on more artistic installations, focusing on environmental issues and the relationship between people and nature, highlighting the people’s impact on its surroundings. This can be seen in her work Groundswell – a mound of recycled glass and in her series of Wave fields in which she reshaped grass into ocean waves. Water is another recurring motive in Lin’s art, such as Wave Field in which she captured the motion of water, the 2×4 Landscape sculpture that resonant water movement, and her 2006 series Bodies of Water – a representation of The Caspian Sea, The Black Sea, and The Red Sea. In 2000, Lin created a series of seven installations along the Columbia River and Snake River for the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In this work, Lin explored the impact of the expedition on the land and the Native population throughout history. Lin’s environmentalism interest reached its peak in her work What Is Missing. Began in 2009, this multimedia project is an examination and commemoration of the growing threats of biodiversity and natural habitats. Lin is known mainly as a sculptor, though she also worked on various architectural projects that have become recognized for their emphasis on sustainability. Among them are the Langston Hughes Library in Clinton, Tennessee, and the Museum of Chinese in America in NYC. Her creative process has a verbal and literal component. First, she expresses the work verbally to understand its meaning. Then she verbalizes the definition of the site where the work will be presented, trying to understand the piece conceptually and its relationship with nature. Finally, she creates a design model and examines the juxtaposition of the materials and their relationship with the viewers and the surroundings. Read more...

Born Edith Claire Posener in San Bernardino, California. Her parents got divorced, and she grew up in Searchlight, Nevada, and Los Angeles, California. Head studied French at the University of California at Berkeley and then romance languages at Stanford University. At 23, she worked as a French teacher at the Hollywood School for Girls. To earn a higher salary, she took another position at the school as an art teacher. Having no formal education in arts, she took evening drawing lessons at the Chouinard Art College and Otis Art Institute. In 1923, at the age of 26, she married Charles Head, and though the marriage did not last long, she kept using Head as her surname. At 27, Head was hired by Paramount Pictures as a sketch artist for silent films. Her first design appeared in 1925 in the movie The Wanderer. She worked her way up, and within a few years, she became one of the leading costume designers in Hollywood. In 1938, at the age of 41, Head was appointed chief designer at Paramount pictures, becoming the first woman to head the design department of a major studio. During the 1940s, Head gained public attention after designing Ginger Rogers’s top mink-lined gown in the film Lady in the Dark. In 1950, after winning her first Academy Award for The Heiress, Head became the most wanted and successful custom designer in Hollywood. Head was the favorite designer of many leading actresses, such as Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, and the first pick for designing the costumes for the biggest movies of the era, including Samson and Delilah, All About Eve, and Sabrina. In 1967, when she is 70 years old, Head left Paramount for Universal Studios. There, she won her first Academy Award for outfitting male stars in the film The Sting. She began designing costumes for TV productions, such as Bewitched and the mini-series Little Women. In the late 1970s, she designed the women’s uniform for the United States Coast Guard, for which she received the Meritorious Public Service Award. At the age of 83, Head worked on her last film project, the comedy, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. She died in the following year, a few days before her 84th birthday. Throughout her career, Head was nominated for 35 Academy Awards, winning 8 times – setting the record for the most honored costume designer in Academy Award history.   Read more...

Eleanor Lambert was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana. She was always interested in art, and while growing up, she wanted to be a sculptor. Over time fashion became her passion, and after high school, she attended the John Herron School of Art and then the Art Institute of Chicago. At 22 years old, she moved to NYC and began her professional career at an advertising agency. After a short period, she was hired as the Whitney Museum of American Art’s first press director. At the same time, she helped found both the Art Dealers Association of America and the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to store and preserve exceptional design trends. Lambert opened her advertising agency, specializing in representing artists and art galleries. Within a short time, she earned a reputation that drew world-known artists, such as Jacob Epstein and Jackson Pollock. In 1943, she was appointed as the press director of the New York Dress Institute. In this position, she developed the concept of fashion week in NYC, then called “Press Week.” In the beginning, there were two small-scale fashion weeks every year happening all over the city, but over time the events became the most important fashion events of the year, and she was called to produce similar events all over the world, from Japan to Australia and even in the Soviet Union. As a devoted advocate for American fashion, Lambert always thought of new ways to promote American designers. With that in mind, she founded two establishments that put American fashion on the map – the International Best Dressed List and the Coty Fashion Critics’ Award (today the CFDA Awards, that referred to as “the Oscars of the fashion world”). Lambert worked to bring together American designers, enabling them to unite their voices in issues that affected them, regardless to their success or status. So, in 1962, she founded the Council of Fashion Designers of America. She ran the council for more than a decade and was an honorary member until she passed away in 2003. Three years later, she was appointed by President Johnson as the first US representative to the National Council on the Arts. Afterward, she became active in European fashion circles, representing upcoming designers such as Valentino and Pierre Cardin and exposing them to the American clientele. In 1973, she produced a historical fashion show at the Palace of Versailles, in which five American designers showed alongside five French designers. This show was the turning point in the perception of the European fashion world toward American fashion. Lambert was active in the fashion world until the day she died at the age of 100. In her 75 years career, she worked tirelessly to promote American fashion in the US and abroad and make NYC one of the world’s fashion capitals. Read more...

Julie Taymor was born in Newton, Massachusetts. Her interest in theatre began at a young age, producing family and friends’ performances in the backyard. At the age of 10, she joined the Boston Children’s Theatre, and by the age of 13, she joined Julie Portman Theatre Workshop, in which she discovered the art of “Living Theatre.” She graduated high school at 16 and went to Paris to attend the L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. There she learned mime and developed physical sensibilities, which later she used many times in her productions. At the age of 18, Taymor returned to the US and studied folklore and mythology studies at Oberlin College, graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors. At 22, with the Thomas J. Watson Foundation fellowship, she traveled to Japan and Indonesia, studying the local theater and art forms. She stayed in Indonesia for four years, founding the Teatr Loh – a mask and dance company with actors, dancers, musicians, and puppeteers from all around the world. In 1980, Taymor came back to the US, settling in NYC. Around that time, she met the composer Elliot Goldenthal, who became her life partner and artistic collaborator. Her career took off in New York, designing masks, costumes, and puppets for various productions, including The Haggadah, Black Elk Lives, and Savages. At the same time, she promoted several projects of her own, adapting materials into the theater and directing numerous plays, including The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, and Titus Andronicus. In 1997, Taymor’s Broadway production of The Lion King had premiered. Not only she directed the musical but also designed the costumes, masks, and puppets. The musical became the highest-grossing Broadway production of all time, performing in more than 12 countries and seen by over 45 million people worldwide. Taymor became the first woman to receive the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical. In 1992, at the age of 40, she directed her first opera – Oedipus rex by Stravinsky. She loved it and continued to direct one production after another, including The Flying Dutchman by Wagner, Salome by Richard Strauss, and The Magic Flute by Mozart. In the same year, she also directed her first film – Fool’s Fire. Over the years, she adapted many of her opera and theater productions into movies, such as Oedipus rex, Titus, and The Tempest. In 2002, she directed her acclaimed film Frida, depicting the life story of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Her next movie was Jukebox musical Across the Universe – a love story during the Vietnam War set to the soundtrack of The Beatles. In 2020, she released the film The Glorias, following the life of the feminist icon Gloria Steinem. Read more...

Donna Ivy Faske was born in Queens, NYC, to a family of Jewish descent. When she was three years old, her father died in a car accident, and afterward, her mother remarried, and the family moved to Hewlett, Long Island. She grew up surrounded by fashion, her mother was a model and a showroom sales representative, and her stepfather was a tailor and suit designer. As a teenager, she began working in the industry, selling clothes at a local boutique. Straight after high school, she began studying at Parsons School of Design and worked as an assistant designer at Anne Klein & Company. Within two years, she was promoted to associate designer, and at the age of 26, when Anne Klein died, she became head designer of the house, alongside Louis Dell’Ollio. In 1985 she launched her label with her second husband. She wanted to design clothes that she would love to wear and “design modern clothes for modern people.” She became recognized for her essentials line – offering seven items that can be mixed and matched. For that, she is credited with initiating the concept of the capsule wardrobe. Three years later, she created DKNY, an affordable fashion line for younger women, and in 1990 she added the DKNY Jeans. In 1992, after seeing the lack of sophisticated clothing for men, she launched DKNY Men. Over time, the Dona Karan brand has grown into a full lifestyle industry, that in addition to apparel, it offered lingerie, handbags, bedding and tableware, fragrances, beauty and cosmetics products, and even home furnishings. Among her regular clients were Barbra Streisand, Richard Gere, Candace Bergen, and Hillary Rodham Clinton. In 1997, Karan left her CEO position at her company but continued to serve as a designer and chairwoman for the Donna Karan line. In 2001, she sold the company to LVMH and but stayed as a designer. In 2007, she launched the Urban Zen brand, in which she integrates fashion and philanthropy. Read more...

Fern Mallis was born in Brooklyn, NYC. Her father sold females’ scarves in the Garment District, and when as a kid, she used to go with him to work, escorting him in his meetings with customers and fashion directors, as well as watching the scarves designers. After high school, she attended University at Buffalo, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. At age 21, while still at college, she was selected as a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine, first as an art editor and later as a merchandising editor. When the fellowship was over, they offered her a job. At 27, she left the magazine and worked at Gimbels East for a while, before founding a relations firm for architects and interior designers with two of her friends. At age 43, Mallis decided to return to the fashion industry and was hired as an executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) – the governing body of fashion designers and runway shows in the US. At this position, she organized the annual CFDA Fashion Awards Galas and launched numerous charities, including the Fashion Targets Breast Cancer and the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS. In 1993, alongside Stan Herman, CFDA ‘s president at the time, she created the 7th on Sixth – a weeklong event that provided a platform for fashion designers to display their work. This annual event, which later became known as NYC Fashion Week, soon grew into an international venue. In 2001, the Fashion Week concept was acquired by IMG company, and Mallis was appointed its Senior VP of IMG Fashion. Under her leadership, Fashion Week became a global phenomenon, with annual shows happening worldwide, from LA and Miami to Berlin, Mumbai, and Sydney. There, she organized the events and served as a judge and as a mentor. At the age of 62, she left IMG to found an international fashion and design consultancy – Fern Mallis LLC. Two years later, she launched a jewelry line called FERN FINDS. Over the years, Mallis featured on many TV programs, such as Project Runway, She’s Got the Look, and America’s Next Top Model. She hosted a conversation series at the 92nd Street Y, in which she interviewed leading figures in the fashion industry, among them, are Donna Karan, Tom Ford, Diane von Furstenberg, and Oscar de la Renta. She serves as a board member of various organizations, including the Partnership for the Homeless, the Steering Committee for NYCx Design Week, and Tara Jewels in Mumbai, India. Read more...