Joan Vass (1925-2011) was an American knitwear designer and founder of the company bearing her name.
Joan Vass (1925-2011) was an American knitwear designer and founder of the company bearing her name.
Joan Isabel Kaplan was born in New York City on 19 May 1925. [1] She studied philosophy and history of art at Vassar and the University of Wisconsin, writing her thesis on Søren Kierkegaard. [2] [1] While at Wisconsin, she met and married her husband, the Abstract Expressionist painter and sculptor Gene Vass (1922-1996). [1] [3]
The couple moved to Buffalo after World War II, where Gene had his studies supported by the G.I. Bill and the pregnant Joan sat as an artist's model for students. [1] In 1959, the Vasses lived in Rome, Italy, as Gene had been awarded the Prix de Rome, before returning to New York in 1960 and becoming part of the first group of creatives and intellectuals to originate the loft apartment community in SoHo, Manhattan. [1] [4] Their home at 159 Mercer Street was accessible only by the building's original industrial freight elevator. [1]
Vass worked for the publishing companies Walker & Company and Harry N. Abrams as an editor of art books, wrote for Art in America , and was a fund-raiser and assistant curator for the Museum of Modern Art before launching her fashion business in the mid-1970s. [1] [4] Around the same time as she started her business, Joan and Gene separated. They were divorced in the late 1980s and Gene died in 1996. [1] [4]
Joan Vass did not train in fashion design, and was inspired to take up knitting after the actress Cynthia Harris recommended it to her. [1] She employed local women to make her original designs up for her in the cottage industry manner. [1] Vass explained that her intention was to enable older women to support themselves through their own skills, and that her workers chose their own times, some working full-time and others fitting in the work as and when they could, such as while on the bus to their other employment. [1] Her first merchandise was knitted hats and scarves, followed by sweaters, and a couple years later in 1977, she launched her own label. [4] Following an introduction to Geraldine Stutz, the president of Henri Bendel, Vass's knitwear became more widely known and was seen on magazine covers modeled by the likes of Farrah Fawcett and Candice Bergen. [1] She was awarded a Coty Award in 1979 for "contribution to the international status of American fashion". [2] Other awards Vass received were the Prince Machiavelli Prix de Cachet award in 1980 and the Smithsonian Institution's Extraordinary Women in Fashion award in 1978. [4] [5]
As she became more successful, Vass signed up with a South Carolina wholesale manufacturer Signal Apparel, which allowed her to sell her clothes in 400 stores across America, making multi-million pound sales. [1] [4] In addition to unique sweaters marketed as "O.O.K." (one of a kind), some of her most successful designs were a top based upon Marlon Brando's singlet in A Streetcar Named Desire and a James Bond inspired watch cap called the 007. [1] She insisted on producing garments in classic styles and repeated designs, and regularly reissued designs rather than offering them solely for one season. [1] Her work used natural fibers such as wool and cotton, and was known for being unstructured, quirky, and being constructed with selvages. [4]
Although her business was widely successful and her designs were popular with clients including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Ali MacGraw, and Brooke Hayward, Voss maintained it as much as possible as a family affair. [4] She worked from home, one of the first designers to do so, with an unlisted phone number, before opening business in West 25th Street and eventually moving to 105 East 29th Street. [4] Her three children were all involved in the business, with her son Jason trying to negotiate licensing deals and other agreements, her daughter Sara handling public relations, and her adopted son Richard Mauro having responsibility for Joan Vass U.S.A.. [4] Vass had a reputation for being outspoken and contrary, such as wearing black clothing when most people were wearing Emilio Pucci's vibrant psychedelic prints. [1] She was an active member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, describing herself as an "old crone" due to her confrontational presence at meetings, although she had the respect and agreement of fellow members such as former CFDA President Stan Herman. [4] [5]
Vass retired in 2006, the same year that Global Sourcing and Design began its purchase of the Joan Vass company. [4] In Spring 2007 Global launched the sublines Joan Vass Signature and Joan Vass Studio, and Vass's high end label closed. [4] The acquisition of Joan Vass by Global was completed in 2010. [1]
Vass died in her sleep at home on 6 January 2011 following a fall several weeks earlier. [1] [4] She was survived by her three children. [1]
Elsa Schiaparelli was an Italian fashion designer from an aristocratic background. She created the house of Schiaparelli in Paris in 1927, which she managed from the 1930s to the 1950s. Starting with knitwear, Schiaparelli's designs celebrated Surrealism and eccentric fashions. Her collections were famous for unconventional and artistic themes like the human body, insects, or trompe-l'œil, and for the use of bright colors like her "shocking pink".
Sonia Rykiel was a French fashion designer and writer. She created the Poor Boy Sweater, which was featured on the cover of French Elle magazine. Her knitwear designs and new fashion techniques led her to be dubbed the "Queen of Knits". The Sonia Rykiel label was founded in 1968, upon the opening of her first store, making clothing, accessories, and fragrances. Rykiel was also a writer, and her first book was published in 1979. In 2012, Rykiel revealed that she was suffering from Parkinson's disease. She died from complications of the disease on 25 August 2016.
Kenneth Jay Lane was an American costume jewelry designer.
Iris Von Arnim is an internationally acclaimed German fashion designer.
Tory Burch is an American fashion designer, businesswoman, and philanthropist. She is the Executive Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of her own brand, Tory Burch LLC. She was listed as the 88th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes in 2020.
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.
Katie Grand is a British stylist, creative director and fashion journalist. She founded the fashion magazine LOVE in 2009, followed by fashion bible and creative agency Perfect in 2020.
Orla Kiely, OBE is an Irish fashion designer based in London. She began her career designing hats, and moved on to design work on handbags and a variety of other items including kitchenware and cars. She received a master's degree from the Royal College of Art. She worked with several companies before setting up her own business.
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.
Mary Jane Marcasiano is an American fashion and costume designer, film producer, and social entrepreneur.
Adolfo Faustino Sardiña, professionally known as Adolfo, was a Cuban-born American fashion designer who started out as a milliner in the 1950s. While chief designer for the wholesale milliners Emme, he won the Coty Award and the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award. In 1963 he set up his own salon in New York, firstly as a milliner, and then focusing on clothing. He retired from fashion design in 1993.
Markus Lupfer is a German fashion designer and founder of the eponymous company, based in London, United Kingdom.
Florence Feinberg Eiseman (1899-1988) was an American fashion designer specializing in children's clothing. She launched the Florence Eiseman childrenswear business in 1945, which became one of Wisconsin's leading fashion brands.
Marchesa Olga di Grésy (1900-1994) was an Italian fashion designer specialising in knitwear, active between 1928 and 1984. Her company, Mirsa, was one of the most successful Italian knitwear companies of the immediately post-Second World War period, and she was the first woman to be made a Knight of the Order of Merit for Labour.
Giancarlo Venturini was an Italian knitwear designer active in the 1950s-1970s.
Adrienne Steckling-Coen (1934-2006), known as Adri, was an American fashion designer whose label, Adri, was particularly successful in the 1970s-1980s.
Laura Pearson is an autralian ballet dancer. She went to ABS in Melbourne.
Jeanne S. Campbell (1919–2002) was an American fashion designer active from the 1940s to the 1970s. She was part of the American sportswear movement alongside Bonnie Cashin and Claire McCardell.
Warm & Wonderful Knitwear is a British fashion brand specialising in knitwear. Founded by Joanna Osborne and Sally Muir in 1979, the label is best known for its "black sheep" sweater, famously worn by Diana, Princess of Wales. In 2023, a Warm & Wonderful jumper worn by Diana became the most valuable sweater in history.
| Authority control databases: Artists |
|---|
