9 Women Who Created World Famous Brands (Some We Knew The Names But Not The Faces)

There are different reasons why someone can become famous. Sometimes because the person is a model, singer, or film or TV artist. But in other situations, fame is due to what it creates. This was the case of the protagonists of our post today, who built true fashion empires. And while it’s likely that they’re all familiar to us, that we’re familiar with their designs, and that we’ve even seen their name tags on some of the stores we’ve visited, we may not really know who the people behind these hits are, what led them to the top and what their lives were like.

We, from awesome.club we decided to research the lives of these entrepreneurs and discovered much more than successful brands in their trajectories. At the end of this post, you’ll find the story of a woman who didn’t create a fashion empire, but a product that remains successful to this day.

Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel (her real name) opened her first fashion store in 1910. Initially, the brand only sold women’s hats, but 11 years later, in 1921, it included Chanel No. she named it that because 5 was her favorite number, and soon became the favorite of high society women.

Chanel was known for freeing women from the suffocating corset and proposing a comfortable and elegant style at the same time. Her success and international fame led her to be the only designer on the magazine’s list. Team of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

We know that black and white were the colors chosen by Coco. And that she had learned to sew at Aubazine Abbey, where she spent her childhood. There, the only existing fabrics had the colors of the habit of the nuns: black and white. Being guided by these tones, she created the famous Little Black Dress, the classic black dress that marked the before and after in women’s fashion design. Coco had chosen a forbidden color, until then associated with mourning, to transform it into a fashion icon.

The Chanel brand has many stores around the world, and its name is one of the most recognizable in haute couture. Today, the room at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, where she lived, is called the “Suite Coco Chanel”.

Estée, whose real name was Josephine Esther Mentzer, was born in New York and worked for much of her childhood in her family’s hardware store. However, that was far from her destiny. When she grew up, she started helping her uncle, a chemist who made and sold creams, fragrances, lotions and blushes. With him, she learned the secrets of what would become her world: the beauty industry.

In 1946, Lauder founded with her husband, Joseph Lauder, The Estée Lauder Companies. Since then, the cosmetics company has continued to grow. Initially, it only sold basic skin care products such as creams, lotions and cleansing oils, but just two years later it had already set up shop in the famous Saks Fifth Avenue store in New York.

Over time, the range of products that the company offered was expanded with new brands such as Aramis and Clinique. Aramis was the first prestige fragrance aimed at men and was available in department stores. On the other hand, Clinique was also a pioneer in the same sense: it was the first female cosmetics company to introduce a second line for men. Today, the company is a veritable empire made up of many brands and its annual revenue exceeds 10 billion dollars.

Donna Karan was born in New York and it is possible that she inherited a vocation for design and fashion from her parents. Her mother was a model and her father a tailor. In 1984, she left the company of designer Anne Klein, where she had trained, to start her own business. The following year, she presented her first womenswear collection, with her own brand: Donna Karan New York.

The objective was precise and defined in one sentence: “Modern clothing design for modern people”. The stylist intended to create and sell only pieces that she herself was willing to wear. Some time later, when she had already been dubbed “the queen of Seventh Avenue”, she created a less expensive brand aimed at younger women: DKNY.

Donna became famous for her women’s collection Seven Easy Pieces (“seven basic pieces”), which was composed of simple items that, depending on how they were mixed and matched, generated different models for each day of the week. Between 1980 and 1990, every woman who considered herself modern wanted to have one of her outfits.

In mid-2015, she stopped being the designer for the brand to dedicate herself completely to Urban Zen, a brand she created in 2007, but to which she had not dedicated the necessary time until then. Clothes and many handcrafted products can be found in her stores, from jewelry and leather goods to Haitian vases and wooden furniture. True to her style, the creator always defines her products as basic and timeless.

Vivienne was born in England in 1941. Just over 30 years later, she opened SEX, a store specializing in clothing that reflected the style of the punk movement. This was the brand that distinguished the designer’s fashion. Who inspired her was her partner and partner, Malcolm McLaren. The artist would direct and even name the Sex Pistols the band that dominated the British punk scene in the 1970s.

By the end of that decade, the “mother of punk” was already a symbol of the avant-garde who, in her shows, combined designs with makeup and extravagant hairstyles. In the 1980s, Vivienne’s penchant for transgression continued to be her trademark. That’s how she created a new collection called Pirate, intended for “brave heroes”: pirates, buccaneers and dandies. Later, he went more traditional, using classic British fabrics such as Scottish designs and tartan.

Today, Vivienne Westwood is one of the last independent fashion companies and has stores all over the world, from London to Shanghai. On many occasions, this unique and prolific woman has used her collections to raise awareness of climate change and care for the environment. She is also recognized as one of the most influential fashion designers in the world today.

Diane von Fürstenberg, former Princess Diane of Fürstenberg, made history for being the creator of the famous wrap dress, “envelope dress” also known as a wrap dress, which became an icon of the 1970s and is still in vogue today. This creation was the springboard that led her to build an empire that currently can reach 450 million dollars. Her signature is available worldwide, and her designs have been worn by famous figures including Kate Middleton (the Duchess of Cambridge), Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Beckinsale, Madonna, Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Lopez.

In 1969, Diane married Prince Egon von Fürstenberg, but the couple split shortly after settling in New York. It was in 1974 that she decided to launch herself into the world of fashion, creating her own designs, and the dress was the ace that the famous designer had up her sleeve.

At that time, she noticed that many women dressed in matching crossed blouses and skirts of the same color, so she thought of turning these two pieces into just one. Lightweight, comfortable, wrinkle-proof and adaptable to any female figure, the wrap dress is defined by its own creator as a friend in the closet waiting to be used by any woman who gets up in the morning to go to work and needs something comfortable and elegant at the same time.

Its success was resounding: soon around 25,000 models began to be manufactured per week. By 1976, about a million dresses had already been sold. Despite the triumph, Diane left the fashion industry in 1985 and founded a publishing house in Paris. Just over ten years later, she returned with a remake of unforgettable design. Once again, its success was overwhelming. Currently, the DVF catalog also offers a complete line of bags, shoes and jewelry.

The British designer became world famous for reinventing 1960s fashion. Short skirts and dresses, colorful stockings, makeup, ribbed blouses and hip belts shaped the style of her brand, which represented the aesthetics of young people and teenagers born after World War II and who were uncomfortable with the solemn, formal and very expensive fashions of the 1950s.

In 1955, together with Alexander Plunket Greene, whom she would marry two years later, she opened her first store, Bazaar, in Chelsea, which at the time was booming. THE boutique became a success, a meeting point for young artists who frequented the place, attracted by the style promoted there and which proposed a new archetype of a girl-woman, very thin and with long legs, in contrast to the voluptuousness of the 1950s. The most famous figures of the time, such as Twiggy, Brigitte Bardot and Nancy Sinatra, wanted to have access to this style.

During the 1960s, Mary Quant opened over a hundred stores across London. Her designs were produced on an industrial scale and broke the mold of traditional fashion (and provoked it). The models, made with cheap fabrics, were fervently demanded by royalty and the more popular sectors.

Although the designer became famous for the miniskirt, many of the clothes and accessories we love today were designed by her: boots over the knee (above-the-knee high), colorful leg warmers, bell-bottoms, open tops, maxi skirts (yes, she thought of that too), blue nail polish, and silver eyeliner.

Today, Mary is over 80 years old and still maintains the same hairstyle and naive style as in the golden age.

The stylist is the daughter of former Beatle Paul McCartney and American photographer Linda McCartney. As a child, she grew up with her family on an organic farm in Sussex, where she learned that the life of any living thing is equally precious. Thus, she became a strong advocate of animal rights, and this position is reflected in her collections, in which the use of animal skins and leather is absent.

Although he started designing when he was still very young, his official debut in the world of fashion came in 1995, when he graduated from Central Saint Martins school. She invited her supermodel friends Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss to join in modeling her prom collection. In 2001, she partnered with the Gucci Group and showed her first collection in Paris. Throughout her career, she also joined other famous companies like H&M and Adidas.

Since the creation process, his work has been constant, varied and prolific. Over time, he got involved in other areas of beauty, such as fragrances and skin care.