The 10 Best Fashion Designers of All Time

We are in Fashion Season, with new fashion week celebrations and spontaneous catwalks appearing on every corner of your city. Fashion conscientiousness is now unescapable! So, you better know what icon influenced your look and whole wardrobe before you dare, plant your stinky foot on the sidewalk.

"Better safe than sorry" - Christian Dior, The first person in history to ever otter the now indispensable saying. Only Christian could start a trend before he was even born...

1. Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel or Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel or Mademoiselle Chanel was a French haute couture designer and founder of the Chanel brand we all know, today. Since 1910.

She is the only fashion designer to appear on Time magazine's list of the one hundred most influential people of the 20th century. No wonder! She distanced herself from the opulent and impractical elegance of the Belle Époque and created a line of casual, simple and comfortable clothing.

2. Giorgio Armani

Although his first hobby was photography, Giorgio Armani studied Medicine for three years at the University of Milan, and after he finished his military service in 1957, he began working at the La Rinascente department store as a window designer.

If you've seen Wonka (2023) starring Timothée Chalamet, La Rinascente is the shopping mall with the big crystal dome where people fly uncontrollably after eating whatever magical chocolate... You can think of Giorgio Armani as a sort of Willy Wonka, if you'd like but I wouldn't make such comparison, myself... The connection I made between the two is extremely weak and purely coincidental... Giorgio would have hated Wonka and his extravagant style very much...! I just wanted to mention Timothée Chalamet in this article. An ego trip, that's all...! A good name for a Giorgio Armani's fragance by the way: "Ego Trip" by Giorgio Armani.

Back to Giorgio! Armani has regularly dressed big Hollywood stars, both in films and in their public appearances. His designs for the film American Gigolo, with a young Richard Gere, helped his emergence into the American market. He was also in charge of the style of the film Phenomena, by Italian horror director Dario Argento. He is a recurring designer among the stars who attend the Oscar Awards. Recently, the singer Beyoncé has become the advertising image of her Diamonds fragrance. Beyoncé might be the closest connection to Willy Wonka's style that Giorgio has ever had to date.

3. Christian Dior

Christian Dior, born in 1905, was an influential French fashion designer, founder of the fashion brand that bears his name, "Dior", one of the brands of luxury items most representative of the last century. "Christian" wouldn't work as well...

During an interview in 1953, when he was asked: "Which queen did you like to dress the most?" He dared to say that: "The only queen I dressed was Eva Perón". In fact, he came to have such an affinity with the glamor of the former Argentine first lady that he had a mannequin with Eva's measurements in his workshop. And I wonder: How many pins were nailed into it just for fun?

4. Yves Saint Laurent

Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent, was a French fashion designer and businessman, considered one of the most important of the second half of the 20th century. He is considered the creator of the women's tuxedo in the 1960s, the promoter of the resurgence of "haute couture" in the 1980s and one of the first to include non-Caucasian models in his shows.

But he wasn't the first or last cocaine addict fashion designer of worldwide acclaim. He then tried to substitute the white powder with excessive amounts of Coca-Cola... And he ended up dying of a brain tumor... But who can forget his Piet Mondrian 1965 collection? Want to look like a "Mondrian" painting?

You perhaps wouldn't because just like Yves said once: "If men wanted to look good in a skirt, they would need the body of an African. And the colour. A skirt with white, skinny legs. Horrible!" - Saint Laurent. This has nothing to do with the Mondrian Collection, but it's an interesting point of view nonetheless...

5. Alexander McQueen

"When I'm dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen." - Alexander McQueen. I didn't know, but thank you for the information dead and gone Alexander McQueen. Unfortunately you will have to compete with all the other mentally ill fashion designers that have claimed that same podium.

No matter how dark his designs were, they always had a gothic sensibility that everyone from Björk to the current Duchess of Westminster was seduced by. "Everyone" includes: Ayumi Hamasaki and Lady Gaga...!

He suffered from depression and no wonder, thinking he started a new century! He took his life after his mother's passing but at least his dogs, who he left a good amount of his heritage to, are doing well now...!

6. Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren was born into a family of Jewish immigrants in New York. He changed his surname that originally was Lifshitz when he was of age. Yes, Ralph was mocked and bullied in school for obvious reasons: "Leave shits"... An origin story a lot of fashion designers, like Saint Laurent, share. What I gather from these coincidences is that if you want your kid to be a millionaire fashion designer, you got to make sure he gets bullied in school... But don't wonder why his nose looks powdery often, decades later, though...!

Lauren studied economics at City College (Manhattan), but shortly after graduating he withdrew from this field of study. He worked for some time as a glove salesman and for a tie manufacturer, where he was inspired to design his own line. In 1967, at age 28, he opened his first tie store and a year later introduced a full line for men. Starting in 1971, it also introduced women's clothing.

Today his brand is considered one of the most prestigious and exclusive firms in the world and with the most international presence. The men's line is divided into different brands or labels: Black Label, Polo Ralph Lauren, RLX and Purple Label, the latter being the most luxurious, exclusive and least accessible of all. In the same way, the women's line is divided into Black Label, Blue Label, Lauren, Pink Pony, RLX and the Haute Couture Collection presented each season. Lastly, it also has a line of fragrances, glasses and other accessories. Now even K-Pop stars wear Ralph Lauren, or rather even Ralph Lauren is worn by K-Pop Stars...

7. Cristóbal Balenciaga Eizaguirre

The prestigious Spanish fashion designer, was born in 1895 and is now considered one of the most important creators of high fashion. His bubble skirts and his strange, feminine but "modernist" silhouettes became the hallmarks of the house. Balenciaga closed in 1972 and was reopened with a new owner in 1986, the Kering group. So the disturbing Balenciaga designs that have been circulating lately are not a representation of the original creator's brand.

Cristóbal was a contemporary of Coco Chanel and Christian Dior, he is the most important Spanish haute couture couturier in history along with Manuel Pertegaz and Elio Berhanyer. I admittedly didn't know either but I did some research and found that Elio once said: "This profession is a vice, it is like being an alcoholic or drug addict". I would only erase the "like" for the quote to be perfect.

8. Karl Lagerfeld

Another disturbing looking figure and probable inspiration for all types of comic book villains is the German fashion designer and European socialite Karl Otto Lagerfeld. He is considered one of the most influential of the second half of the century (another one...!). He owed much of his popularity to his work for the French brand Chanel and the Italian brand Fendi, to his activity as a photographer and also to his striking catwalks, parades and public appearances, in which he was generally surrounded by celebrities of entertainment and supermodels.

9. Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Isabel Swire ,born in the early 40s and known as Vivienne Westwood, was a British fashion designer and businesswoman, considered the main person responsible for the aesthetics associated with the punk and new wave and one of the first to publicly denounce the harmful effects of the fashion industry on the environment. And even though it might be hard to believe, she wasn't a drug addict...

During her adolescence she studied at Harrow School of Art and Trent Park College and taught at a primary school in north London. She eventually married Derek Westwood and had a son, Ben, the marriage lasting until Vivienne met Malcolm McLaren, future manager of the Sex Pistols. The couple had a son, Joseph, and opened the Let it Rock clothing store in 1971 (later renamed "SEX"... The clothing store not the son, fortunately...!) where the designer began exhibiting her original designs.

10. Valentino

The last fashion designer in our long and arduous list was named Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani after the actor Rodolfo Valentino. They all had the longest and/or weirdest names. It's almost as if they needed to make them neat and fashionable by becoming fashion icons...

Broadly speaking, Valentino's style can be summarized as an unbroken continuation of the tradition of 20th century haute couture... Why are fashion designers so insistent in representing whole centuries, like some sort of 100 year contest, when most times they didn't even live to be fifty years old?

If you want to part take in these 100 year old popularity contests we call "Centuries" in fashion, Domestika will take your hand and guide you into your own podium... It's as easy as proclaiming you won and then live a short and tragic life that contradicts your claim, like Alexander McQueen...!

Article writers will make fun of you, sure! But what is that worth in the grand scheme of things?

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