Larry LeGaspi (1950 – 2001) was an American fashion designer best known for creating signature designs worn by Labelle, Kiss, Grace Jones, George Clinton and Funkadelic, Divine, and other notables in the 1970s and 1980s.
Legaspi was born in Lakewood Township, New Jersey, and attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. He subsequently opened his own studio and boutique, Moonstone, where he sold his Art Deco-inspired futuristic styles in a space decorated with a moon and stars motif.
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Larry LeGaspi
Virgil Abloh
Virgil Abloh [ahb-loh] (b. 1980) is an American fashion designer, entrepreneur and DJ who has been the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s men’s wear collection since March 2018. Apart from his work at Louis Vuitton, Abloh serves as the chief executive officer of the Milan-based label Off-White, a fashion house he founded in 2013.
He entered the world of fashion with an internship at Fendi in 2009 alongside rapper Kanye West. The two then began an artistic collaboration that would launch Abloh’s career with the founding Off-White.
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Tinker Hatfield
Tinker Hatfield (b. 1952) is the designer of many of Nike’s most popular and innovative athletic shoe designs, including the Air Jordan 3 through Air Jordan 15, the twentieth anniversary Air Jordan, the Air Jordan XXIII, XXV, XXIX, and other athletic sneakers including the world’s first ‘cross training’ shoes, the Nike Air Trainer. Hatfield oversees Nike’s ‘Innovation Kitchen.’ He is Nike’s Vice President for Design and Special Projects.
He attended the University of Oregon, where he ran track for coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, and at one time had the pole-vault record at the school. Academically, he studied architecture and graduated with a degree from the University of Oregon School of Architecture. Hatfield joined Nike in 1981, and in 1985 started working on shoe design, believing that his architectural skills could be applied to footwear.
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Erté
Romain de Tirtoff (1892 – 1990) was a Russian-born French artist and designer known by the pseudonym Erté [er-tey], the French pronunciation of his initials, R.T. He was a diversely talented 20th-century artist and designer who flourished in an array of fields, including fashion, jewellery, graphic arts, costume and set design for film, theater, and opera, and interior decor.
Tirtoff was born in Saint Petersburg, to a distinguished family with roots tracing back to 1548. In 1910, Romain moved to Paris to pursue a career as a designer. He made this decision despite strong objections from his father, who wanted him to continue the family tradition and become a naval officer. Romain assumed his pseudonym to avoid disgracing the family.
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John Galliano
John Galliano (b. 1960) is a British fashion designer who was head designer of French haute couture houses Givenchy and Christian Dior. He led Dior from 1996 to 2011, when he was abruptly dismissed following his arrest over an alleged anti-Semitic tirade in a Paris bar.
The same day, a video surfaced of Galliano on a similar rant in the same bar the previous December. He was convicted of making ‘public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity,’ and fined €6,000.
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Christian Louboutin
Christian Louboutin (b. 1964) is a footwear designer who launched his line of high-end women’s shoes in France in 1991. Since 1992, his designs have incorporated the shiny, red-lacquered soles that have become his signature. In 2007 Louboutin filed an application for U.S. trademark protection of this red sole design.
Louboutin received inspiration for his lethal-looking stilettos from an incident that occurred in his early 20s. He had visited a museum and noticed that there was a sign forbidding women wearing sharp stilettos from entering for fear of damage to the extensive wood flooring. This image stayed in his mind, and he later used this idea in his designs. ‘I wanted to defy that,’ Louboutin has said. ‘I wanted to create something that broke rules and made women feel confident and empowered.’
Issey Miyake
Issey Miyake (b. 1938) is a Japanese fashion designer. He is known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances. Miyake was born in Hiroshima; as a seven year-old, he witnessed and survived the nuclear bomb. He studied graphic design at the Tama Art University in Tokyo, graduating in 1964. After graduation, he worked in Paris and New York City. Returning to Tokyo in 1970, he found the Miyake Design Studio. In the late ’80s, he began to experiment with new methods of pleating that would allow both flexibility of movement for the wearer as well as ease of care and production.
This eventually resulted in a new technique called ‘garment pleating’ and in 1993’s ‘Pleats Please’ in which the garments are cut and sewn first, then sandwiched between layers of paper and fed into a heat press, where they are pleated. The fabric’s ‘memory’ holds the pleats and when the garments are liberated from their paper cocoon, they are ready-to wear. He had a long friendship with Austrian-born pottery artist Dame Lucie Rie. She bequeathed to him her substantial collection of ceramic and porcelain buttons, which he integrated into his designs and presented them in new collections.
Elsa Schiaparelli
Elsa Schiaparelli [skap-uh-rel-ee] (1890 — 1973) was an Italian fashion designer. Along with Coco Chanel, her greatest rival, she is regarded as one of the most prominent figures in fashion in the early 20th century. Starting with knitwear, Schiaparelli’s designs were heavily influenced by surrealists like her collaborators Salvador Dalí and Alberto Giacometti. Her clients included the heiress Daisy Fellowes and actress Mae West. Schiaparelli did not adapt to the changes in fashion following World War II and her business closed in 1954.
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