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Born:-08/03/1923 Died:-03/19/1974 Anne Klein came of age before World War II and went directly into business without a college education. Anne, whose original name was Hannah Golofski started her career at age fifiteen with a job as a freelance sketcher at a New York wholesale house. After the war, In 1947, with her husband, Ben Klein, Anne Klein founded Junior Sophisticates, designing and marketing junior clothes, of which she was a partner until 1966. She won acclaim for pioneering the change in junior-sized garments from traditionally frilly styles to a sleeker, more sophisticated look. In the meantime, in 1958, she and her first husband were divorced. Trend setter Anne Klein made a name for herself by introducing a sporty element into US fashion. A native New Yorker Anne Klein's artistic abilities were recognized early, when she was awarded a scholarship in high school to continue her education in the study of fashion and went into freelance design after leaving school, eliminating fussiness from women's garments and giving a more youthful look. Known as an American designer, Anne Klein often bragged that she had never seen a European collection. Donna Karan became an assistant at the age of 20.. In 1994, Patrick Robinson resigned from Armani to design the Anne Klein collection in New York. As America's most acclaimed sportswear brand, Anne Klein was a perennial top seller at department stores. Though Claire McCardell is a stylistic antecedent, Anne Klein was the first American designer to create her own sportswear label."Before Anne, the look was a bulletproof gabardine mini-dress with a matching coat and Gucci bag," Dell'Olio says. "There was no sportswear. Designers were hired hands. Then Anne opened in 1968. The company was designer driven. The first designer boutique was the Anne Klein corner at Saks. She paved the road". After Anne Klein's death from cancer in 1974, Donna Karan and Louis Dell'Olio continued as co-designers. Dell'Olio became head designer, and oversees Anne Klein II. Later Richard Tyler took his place.Over the next decade, Karan and Dell'Olio proved that the Anne Klein trademark could have an afterlife. The formidable design duo won the Coty Awards, fashion's equivalent to the Oscars at the time. They also designed Anne Klein II, which was one of the first bridge collections, priced a notch below designer brands and sold in department stores. Anne Klein had more than twenty licensees for jewellry, scarves, belts and such, and it's annual sales grew to more than $400 million at it's peak in the late 1980s. By 1983, Karan felt she had outgrown Anne Klein. She wanted to express herself with her own collection. |  Wearing outfits from their fall lines are Jeanne Campbell (seated front) in bandanna print evening dress, and behind her from left: Anne Fogarty in dress and jacket in charcoal plaid, Eloise Curtis in long torso top and checked skirt, Anne Klein in gold brocade overblouse, chiffon skirt. - 1961 |