Anne Klein

Anne Klein (August 3, 1923 – March 19, 1974) was an American fashion designer who founded her own women's sportswear and apparel label.

Biography

Klein was born as Hannah Golofski to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York on August 3, 1923. She studied art at Girls' Commercial High School in Brooklyn and later went to the Traphagen School of Design in New York from 1937 to 1938 to study fashion. She married her first husband, Ben Klein, in the early 1940s, and together they founded Junior Sophisticates – a clothing company which completely transformed the clothing styles, choices, and attitudes of young American women. The company revolutionized the junior market, doing away with the traditional "little-girl" clothing that featured button-and-bow detailing, and addressing the primary need of this important group—the desire to look more stylish, more polished, and, above all, more grown up.

Beginning as a sketcher she later rose to prominence as a designer of women's sportswear and apparel, establishing Anne Klein and Co. with fashion guru Gunther Oppenheim in 1968. Klein died of breast cancer on March 19, 1974 at the age of 50.