James Galanos was an American fashion designer and couturier. Galanos is known for designing clothing for America's social elite, including Nancy Reagan, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and others.
Claire McCardell was an American fashion designer of ready-to-wear clothing in the twentieth century. She is credited with the creation of American sportswear.
Bonnie Cashin was an American fashion designer. Considered a pioneer in the design of American sportswear, she created innovative, uncomplicated clothing that catered to the modern, independent woman beginning in the post-war era through to her retirement from the fashion world in 1985.
Vera Huppe Maxwell was an American pioneering sportswear and fashion designer.
Anna Maria Garthwaite was an English textile designer known for creating vivid floral designs for silk fabrics hand-woven in Spitalfields, London, in the mid-18th century. Garthwaite was acknowledged as one of the premiere English designers of her day. Many of her original designs in watercolours have survived, and silks based on these designs have been identified in portraiture and in costume collections in England and abroad.
Clare Potter was a fashion designer who was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1903. In the 1930s she was one of the first American fashion designers to be promoted as an individual design talent. Working under her elided name Clarepotter, she has been credited as one of the inventors of American sportswear. Based in Manhattan, she continued designing through the 1940s and 1950s. Her clothes were renowned for being elegant, but easy-to-wear and relaxed, and for their distinctive use of colour. She founded a ready-to-wear fashion company in Manhattan named Timbertop in 1948, and in the 1960s she also established a wholesale company to manufacture fashions. Potter was one of the 17 women gathered together by Edna Woolman Chase, editor-in-chief of Vogue to form the Fashion Group International, Inc., in 1928.
Sportswear is an American fashion term originally used to describe separates, but which since the 1930s has come to be applied to day and evening fashions of varying degrees of formality that demonstrate a specific relaxed approach to their design, while remaining appropriate for a wide range of social occasions. The term is not necessarily synonymous with activewear, clothing designed specifically for participants in sporting pursuits. Although sports clothing was available from European haute couture houses and "sporty" garments were increasingly worn as everyday or informal wear, the early American sportswear designers were associated with ready-to-wear manufacturers. While most fashions in America in the early 20th century were directly copied from, or influenced heavily by Paris, American sportswear became a home-grown exception to this rule, and could be described as the American Look. Sportswear was designed to be easy to look after, with accessible fastenings that enabled a modern emancipated woman to dress herself without a maid's assistance.
Vera Neumann was an American artist and entrepreneur best known for her boldly colored linen patterns and scarves signed "Vera" and featuring a ladybug.
Adele Simpson was an American fashion designer with a successful career that spanned nearly five decades, as well as a child performer in vaudeville who danced in productions with Milton Berle and other entertainers.
Anne Fogarty was an American fashion designer, active 1940–1980, who was noted for her understated, ladylike designs that were accessible to American women on a limited income. She started out as a model in New York in 1939, working for Harvey Berin on Seventh Avenue, before studying fashion design. She eventually secured a full-time design job in 1948, and became well-known for full-skirted designs with fitted bodices, inspired by Dior's New Look.
Mollie Parnis, later Livingston, was an American fashion designer. She belongs to the first generation of American designers to be known to the public by name rather than by affiliation to a department store and is best known for designing clothing worn by many First Ladies, as well as the uniform of the Cadet Nurse Corps in World War II.
Francesca Sterlacci is an American fashion designer, author and entrepreneur. She launched her clothing brand, Francesca Sterlacci Ltd. in 1980, and continued designing clothes under her label until 1989. Sterlacci joined the Fashion Institute of Technology as a teacher in 1990, and became the chairwoman of the Fashion department at the institute in 2001.
A sailor dress is a child's or woman's dress that follows the styling of the sailor suit, particularly the bodice and collar treatment. A sailor-collared blouse is called a middy blouse. In early 20th-century America, sailor dresses were very popularly known as Peter Thomson dresses after the former naval tailor credited with creating the style.
Thomas Franklin Brigance was a Texan-born New York-based fashion designer noted for his work in sportswear in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. As a house designer for Lord & Taylor, Brigance was best known for bathing costumes and play clothes, and for his clever use of flattering details such as pleats and darts. During the 1930s Brigance was a rare example of a male working in the female-dominated world of American sportswear design. In the late 1930s, he was regularly mentioned alongside Clare Potter as a leading name in mid-range priced sportswear. Like Potter, Brigance was skilled at designing smart, fashionable clothing which could easily be mass-produced, making his work attractive to manufacturers as well as to customers.
Tina Leser was an American fashion designer. Part of a generation of pioneering sportswear designers, Leser was particularly known for her global influences.
Heidi Weisel was an American fashion designer. She was the founder and head of design for Heidi Weisel, a New York City-based women's luxury brand. Weisel's signature was creating modern, timeless evening wear with the simplicity and ease of sportswear. She was known for her unexpected mix of fabrics, often incorporating knitted cashmere, silk chiffon, silk satin, lace, tulle, and leather. A Heidi Weisel chiffon and lace design is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Weisel was a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA).
Traphagen School of Fashion was an art and design school in operation from 1923 to 1991, and was located at 1680 Broadway in New York City. The school was founded and directed by Ethel Traphagen Leigh (1883–1963) with a focus on the foundational concepts of the American design movement. This was one of the earliest fashion schools and played a role in the development of American fashion by educating over 28,000 students in 68 years of operation.
Arthur Lee McGee was an American fashion designer. In 1957, he was the first African American designer hired to run a design studio on Seventh Avenue in the Garment District in New York City.
Victor Joris (1929–2013) was an American fashion designer and fashion illustrator. He was active between 1945 until the 1970s.
Margit Felligi or Margit Felligi Laszlo was an American clothing designer, notable for her work with Cole of California in swimwear.
