Karl Lagerfeld was born on September 10, 1933, in Hamburg, Germany. He died on February 19, 2019, in Paris, France, was a German fashion designer and photographer who is best known for reviving Chanel, the iconic French fashion business founded by Coco Chanel in the early twentieth century. In 1952, Lagerfeld relocated to Paris. In 1954, he earned first prize in the French International Wool Secretariat (now the International Woolmark Prize) for his coat design, and in 1955, he was hired by Pierre Balmain, who produced his design.

He became artistic director of Jean Patou's fashion house three years later. In 1964, he moved to Italy to study art history. But he was soon working as a freelance designer for firms including Chloé (for whom he designed collections from 1964 to 1983 and again from 1992 to 1997), Krizia, Valentino, and shoemaker Charles Jourdan. Fendi, an expensive Italian design brand, appointed him as a consultant director in 1967 to revamp the company's fur line. His creations were revolutionary. He pioneered the use of pelts such as mole, rabbit, and squirrel, which had never been used in high-fashion designs previously. Throughout his career, he remained with Fendi. Lagerfeld created his first couture collection for Chanel in 1983, and after a year at the house, he founded his own label in 1984.

Lagerfeld received the British Fashion Award for Outstanding Achievement in 2015, and he was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Germany.

Nationality: Germany
Born: September 10, 1933
Died: February 19, 2019
Career: Creative direction of the Chanel and Fend

Donatella Versace, the vice-president and head designer of the Versace firm, was born on May 2, 1955. She is the sister of Gianni Versace, who created what has now become a family company and died in 1997. Donatella's first exposure to design came from her mother, who worked in the fashion industry. Her father was a wealthy aristocrat. A tetanus infection claimed the life of Donatella's sibling. She and her husband, Paul Beck, have two children, Daniel and Allegra. Donatella is also the aunt of Antonio and Francesca, the children of Santo Versace, one of her brothers. Santo became involved in the firm and eventually rose to the position of CEO.

She had a passion for fashion and intended to work in the public relations department. Donatella Versace told Vogue in an interview that she was a critic and muse for her brother. Donatella guided Gianni on several occasions when it came to creating and coordinating Versace advertising campaigns and fashion shows.

In 2010, Do Something, which seeks to commemorate and encourage young people, honored her with a Do Something With Style Award for her imaginative charitable activities for children. She is also the patron of the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Versace has evolved into a lifestyle brand that produces clothing, accessories, home furnishings, and even hotels under Donatella's guidance.

Nationality: Italian
Born: May 2, 1955
Career: Chief creative officer of Versace

Tom Ford is a fashion designer and filmmaker who worked as Gucci's Creative Director from 1994 until 2004. In 2004, he launched his own fashion brand called Tom Ford. Tom Ford changed his major from architecture to fashion while attending the Parsons School of Design in Paris. In 1990, he was named Gucci's Womenswear Designer. And four years later, he was named Creative Director. Gucci's annual revenues increased to $3 billion under Ford's leadership. Ford has created his own fashion label and directed many films after quitting Gucci in 2005.

Ford's family relocated to New Mexico, where he attended the prestigious Santa Fe Preparatory School for high school. He graduated at the age of 17 and went on to New York University to study art history in 1979. While at NYU, Ford is a regular at the legendary Studio 54 nightclub, and his grades suffered as a result. Ford dropped out of NYU after only a year and relocated to Los Angeles, where he worked as a commercial actor. He returned to New York a few years later to study architecture at the Parsons School of Design. Ford then moved to Parsons' Paris campus to finish his last year of architecture education before opting to pursue a career in fashion.

Nationality: American
Born: August 27, 1961
Career: Chairman of Tom Ford

Marc Jacobs was born in New York City on April 9, 1963. Jacobs' life was flipped upside down when his father died of ulcerative colitis at the age of seven, a condition that Jacobs also had. According to Jacobs, his mother's reaction to his father's death was abysmal, leading to a life of power dating and unsuccessful marriages that wreaked havoc on the family. Jacobs and his siblings were forced to move to a different home after each remarriage, hopping from New Jersey to Long Island and then the Bronx.

Jacobs remained committed to his ambitions of being a well-known designer. He was attending the High School of Art and Design during the day and working at the expensive clothes boutique Charivari after school by the age of 15. In between folding items and dressing mannequins, the team at Charivari enabled their young stockboy to create sweaters for the store. Jacobs was accepted to the prestigious Parsons School for Design, where he distinguished himself among his peers by winning the Perry Ellis Gold Thimble Award and Design Student of the Year after graduation in 1984. He designed his first collection for the label Sketchbook for Reuben Thomas shortly after graduation, at the age of 21.

Nationality: American
Born: April 9, 1963
Career: the head designer of Marc Jacobs

Gianni Versace lived in this world from 1946 to 1997. He was born in the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria. He was raised in a house with his mother and father, along with his sister Donatella and brother Santo. Gianni had a sister named Fortunata, but she died of an ailment when she was young. Gianni's mother was a dressmaker who ran a sewing workshop with a staff of twelve seamstresses. From this little location, he began his initial training. Gianni arrived to Milan when he was twenty-six years old, after receiving an education in architecture, to work in the fashion industry.

His weave work drew Genny and Callaghan headhunters in the 1970s. He was hired to design lace and leather collections for the company. Gianni was so impressed by his own success after a few years that he debuted his first signature women's line in Milan at the Palazzo della Permanente Art Museum. His debut fashion presentation took place in the same year. Then he showed his menswear collection and joined Jorge Saud, who later became Giorgio Armani's collaborator. Gianni started his first shop in Milan's Via della Spiga in 1978. Abstract, Greek, and Ancient Roman art, as well as Andy Warhol, were sources of inspiration for the designer.

Gianni Versace was assassinated near his Miami Beach home in 1997. At the moment, he had just returned from a morning walk. Normally, Gianni was followed by an aide whenever he left the house, but that morning he elected to walk out alone. Following a police inquiry, it was determined that Andrew Cunanan murdered Gianni with a gun and then shot himself with the same firearm eight days later.

Nationality: Italian
Born: December 2, 1946

Died: July 15, 1997

Career: Founder, Designer of Versace

Donna Karan is an American fashion designer who was known for her garments' simplicity and comfort. She was born on October 2, 1948, in Forest Hills, New York. Her father was a tailor, while her mother worked in the garment sector of New York City as a model and a showroom sales agent. She got her start in the fashion industry when she was 14 years old and lied about her age to get a job selling garments in a store. On the suggestion of her mother's job, designer Chester Weinberg, she was accepted into New York's Parsons School of Design as an uninterested high school student. She began working for sportswear designer Anne Klein after dropping out of school in 1968, and it was during this time that she married boutique owner Mark Karan then the couple separated in 1978.

After Klein died of cancer, Karan was promoted to chief designer and given charge of the Anne Klein autumn collection for that year. Louis Dell'Olio, a former classmate of Karan's, joined the firm as a designer in 1975. In 1977 and 1981, they received the Coty American Fashion Critics Award and were later admitted into the organization's Hall of Fame. The Anne Klein Co. thrived, thanks in part to Karan's promotion of a "bridge" brand, Anne Klein II, a less-expensive designer collection that launched in 1983.

The Council of Fashion Designers of America honored Karan with a lifetime achievement award in 2004. In 2015, she published her memoir, My Journey.

Nationality: American
Born: October 2, 1948
Career: Fashion designer and the creator of the Donna Karan New York

Alexander McQueen was an English fashion designer located in London who worked as the head designer of the Louis Vuitton Givenchy fashion line before launching his own. Alexander McQueen became the lead designer of the Givenchy fashion label, which is owned by Louis Vuitton, and debuted his own menswear collection in 2004. McQueen was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire and received the British Fashion Council's British Designer of the Year award four times. In 2010, after his mother died, he committed suicide.

McQueen left Savile Row and began working with Angels and Bermans, a theatrical costume design firm. His apparel there had a dramatic flair that would become a characteristic of his later solo design work. McQueen subsequently relocated to Milan for a brief spell as a creative assistant to Italian fashion designer Romeo Gigli.

McQueen returned to London in 1992 and enrolled in Central Saint Martin's College of Art & Design, where he received his M.A. in fashion design. His final project for his degree was a collection inspired by Jack the Ripper, which was notably purchased in its whole by Isabella Blow, a well-known London stylist and eccentric. She became McQueen's long-time friend as well as a supporter of his work.

Nationality: British
Born: 17 March 1969
Died: 11 February 2010
Career: Chief designer at Givenchy, Founder of Alexander McQueen label

Stella McCartney was born in London, England, on September 13, 1971. She is the second of three children born to ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and his late wife, Linda. While her birth coincided with the Beatles' disbandment, her early years were molded by her father's hectic recording and touring schedule. Stella and her sister Mary, brother James, and half-sister Heather, a daughter from Linda's first marriage traversed the world with their parents' new band, Wings.

Following Wings' dissolution, the McCartneys moved to an organic farm in Sussex, where they immersed themselves in rural life by rearing farm animals and farming vegetables.

In 1995 from London's Central St. Martins College of Art & Design, McCartney made a splash in the fashion world by inviting friends and supermodels Campbell and Moss to model a range of her clothing. She was hired as the head designer of the fashion label Chloe in 1997.

While some speculated that McCartney's celebrity aided her ascension, she quietly as possible established that she was deserving of the job. Her products successfully appealed to the aspirations and desires of young women, and she was widely regarded as a great success throughout her time at the company.

Nationality: British
Born: September 13, 1971
Career: chief executive of LVMH

Oscar de la Renta was born in the Dominican Republic in 1932 to a family of six sisters from a middle-class household. When he was 18 years old, he left the Caribbean island to pursue painting at the San Fernando Academy. While in Spain, he intended to be an abstract painter, but the world of fashion design wooed him instead. His remarkable drawing ability opened doors for him, and he was quickly accepted into an apprenticeship with Cristobal Balenciaga, Spain's most famous couturier. While on vacation in Paris in 1961, he was employed for his first important position at Lanvin-Castillo. After two years, he moved to New York and joined Elizabeth Arden's American design house. He founded his own distinct ready-to-wear company in 1965, which he still manages today.

De la Renta married Francoise de Langlade in 1967. She was the editor-in-chief of French Vogue. Francoise introduced her husband to some of the fashion industry's most important figures, and she invited many of the rich and famous to his exhibitions. His name immediately became associated with informal luxury, because to its delicate silk designs, ruffles, soft forms, and vibrant color palette. Women of wealth couldn't get enough of his sleek, romantic look, and he even provided a perfume to those who couldn't afford his gowns. He debuted his first fragrance in 1977.

De la Renta served as president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America from 1973 to 1976, and then again from 1986 to 1988, and was well-liked by his colleagues.

Nationality: American, Dominican
Born: July 22, 1932
Died: October 20, 2014
Career: Designer of Lanvin and Balmain

Diane von Furstenberg, whose birth name is Diane Simone Michelle Halfin, was a Belgian-born designer and businesswoman who made a lasting contribution to fashion design with the wrap dress (born December 31, 1946, Brussels, Belgium). Von Furstenberg studied economics at the University of Geneva, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. She met Austro-Italian Prince Egon zu Fürstenberg in Geneva, and they married in 1969. The pair relocated to New York City, where they became well-known as international jet setters. Von Furstenberg began her career as a model in the fashion industry. She developed an interest in the fashion industry's design sector and began by producing basic items such as T-shirts, shirt dresses, and the two parts that later evolved into the wrap dress—a wrap top with a matching skirt.

In 1974, Diane von Furstenberg presented her wrap dress. A long-sleeved silk jersey dress with a fitted top and a skirt that wrapped around the body and tied at the waist was the original design. Its feminine yet efficient style reflected the liberal mood of American society in the 1970s, when more women entered the workforce and began to wear pants, which had been adopted and recognized as part of the female wardrobe since the 1960s. Millions of wrap dresses had been sold by 1976, and von Furstenberg was featured on the covers of Newsweek magazine (March 1976) and The Wall Street Journal as a result of this shopping phenomenon. She established herself as a role model—a modern, dynamic female designer—to whom other women, both inside and outside the fashion industry, looked for inspiration.

Nationality: American, Belgian
Born: December 31, 1946
Career: chairwoman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, fashion designer of Diane von Furstenberg