Female fashion designers -- on top & staying there | Coco Chanel

Designing Women

Female fashion designers who've made it to the top and stayed there. Fashion is a place where women can take center stage as creators and savvy businesswomen as well.

By: Gerit Quealy

February 25, 2011

Source: Apic/Hulton Archive/Getty

Chanel is arguably the matriarch of the female fashion designer today. Of course, dressmakers came before her, then Charles Worth for couture and Madame Grès, even Lady Duff-Gordon (who gets a mention in Titanic for her lingerie designs) – just to give a tiny thumbnail sketch of the timeline here. But "Chanel ushered in the idea of clothing for the modern woman," says Fashion Institute of Technology professor and longtime fashion editor Allison Kyle Leopold, with classic, timeless pieces that still exist today (although the house is now designed by Karl Lagerfeld): the tweed jacket, quilted purse, sailor sweater, braid trim – these all now have the stamp of Chanel.

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