“For the first time in the history of American fashion, leaders in all branches of creative design both east and west coast, representing clothing, textiles, millinery, footwear and jewelry, have banded together and formed a national honorary and ethical society. Its purpose is to gain recognition for fashion design as an important expression of American art and a representative aspect of American culture, and to project the fashion arts as a means of gaining world appreciation for America’s contribution to world civilization. The organization is called the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA).”

The statement above, issued in a press release by the legendary fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, dates to early 1963, just a few months after the CFDA was formed and its charter filed with the Secretary of the State of New York. With a membership of just over fifty of America’s leading fashion design talents, its goals were lofty from the outset, and its primary mandate was the recognition and promotion of fashion design talent based in the United States.

Over the next five decades, as the CFDA membership rolls swelled into the high hundreds, its activities, outreach, and influence expanded exponentially. Now, on the eve of its fiftieth anniversary, in 2012, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Incorporated, officially describes itself as:

“A not-for-profit trade association that leads industry-wide initiatives and whose membership consists of more than 370 of America’s foremost womenswear, menswear, jewelry, and accessory designers. In addition to hosting the annual CFDA Fashion Awards, which recognize the top creative talent in the industry, the organization offers programs which support professional development and scholarships, including the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, the Geoffrey Beene Design Scholar Award, the Liz Claiborne Scholarship Award, and the CFDA/Teen Vogue Scholarship. Member support is provided through the Business Services Network, a high-profile group of companies offering designers strategic opportunities.”

The CFDA’s high-profile membership and its newsworthy activities mirrored not only the ascendancy of American fashion’s global influence, but also the increasing interconnectedness of leading fashion capitals, manufacturing centers, and consumers in every corner of the world. It has thus moved away from its purely design-oriented, art-immersed objectives. Its first charter, for example, was based on that of the American Institute of Architects, and the CDFA obtained its initial funding from the federal government—specifically, a grant from the National Council of the Arts. Today, its activities are more philanthropic, it membership larger and more egalitarian, and it is professionally run. Even though it was built upon the foundation of older organizations, the CFDA’s core mandate was to reject of the mindset of those organizations that sought to hinder individual talent. The CFDA has never strayed from its primary mission and  has remained an entity with a noble goal: to encourage and advance creativity in fashion in America.

This essay is a short history documenting the evolution of the CFDA from its birth in 1962, its early promotional efforts, and its strong ties to the arts, to the growth of its educational programs, its support of worthy causes, its own awards ceremony, and its stewardship of fashion week. The essay is also a chronicle of the individual and collective efforts of its founders, and select presidents and executive directors who have worked so diligently to shape the CFDA.

A large portion of the essay focuses on the creation and the early years of the CFDA. One reason for this is the fact that Eleanor Lambert, the CFDA’s early champion and chief architect, kept an extensive archive of letters, telegrams, working notes, and newspaper clippings. Now part of the Special Collections in the Library at the Fashion Institute of Technology, this mostly unpublished material is a rich and invaluable resource that provides a clear idea of how the CFDA was created and grew. Information in the archives also demonstrates how closely Lambert aligned the early programming of the CFDA with the performing and fine arts; she clearly believed that fashion was a worthy creative entity on par with other artistic disciplines. It should be noted that Lambert was also the publicist for many of the designers both before and during their CFDA memberships, a fact that seems not to have hampered her activities.

The middle part of the essay briefly documents the work of its presidents, particularly Oscar de la Renta, who in his two terms as President of the CFDA, in the early 1970s and then the late 1980s, oversaw not only the “clubby” and intimate membership, but also the expansion of ambitious programming that pushed American fashion onto the world stage.

The final part of the essay traces the exponential growth of the organization under the CFDA’s most recent presidents, Stan Herman (1991-2006) and Diane von Furstenberg, its current leader. They, along with their executive directors, Fern Mallis, Steven Kolb and Lisa Smilor, and expanded professional staff, have made the CFDA financially potent, thus allowing it to devote more resources to the support of young designers and students in training, and to increase its philanthropic effort in the fights against AIDS and breast cancer.

However, this is far from an all-encompassing history of the CFDA. The content has been selectively chosen to communicate the general development of the organization’s growth and to highlight its more colorful programming. Furthermore, the information follows a general chronology but is also organized thematically, so that specific events or the efforts of a particular individual that span years (even decades) is described in one section, for example, rather than being peppered throughout the essay. Finally, this text is a small part of the visually rich publication entitled Impact. This book, in turn, is the companion to the exhibition organized by the Museum at FIT. The brainchild of the current president, Diane von Furstenberg, Impact is an ode to the most illustrious efforts of CFDA’s many members as they celebrate its fiftieth anniversary.

American Fashion: A Brief History

Before launching into the history of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, it is important to understand the climate in which it emerged. Its primary goal, as noted above, was to advance the notion of American designers. Today, in an era dominated by the designer label, it is perhaps difficult to comprehend how seminal the role of the CFDA was in creating the platform for such recognition.

The CFDA arose during one of the most culturally rich periods in the history of the United States. It was in this environment of bourgeoning creativity in which America—and especially New York City—became a global fashion nexus. From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the American fashion machine was enormous and possessed the largest and most advanced manufacturing system in the world. Although there were countless talented designers, few were known by name until the outbreak of World War II. Clothing manufacturers had a strong grip on the American fashion industry and few, if any, had interest in promoting domestic talent. Manufacturers, as well as the leading fashion editors of the day, strongly supported the notion of French-designed apparel. Ironically, American-made clothing was readily purchased by consumers in the United States and it was often more compelling than French haute couture. Unlike “artistic” high styles from Paris, American fashion encompasses a range of clothing types positioned along a wide spectrum that represents nearly every type of sophisticated design made throughout the twentieth century, from inexpensive sportswear and separates, to blue jeans and uniforms, luxurious ready-to-wear, and costly, custom-made gowns.

For the individual designers of these clothes, the road to recognition was long. Even prior to the onset of World War II, there was a growing movement in the United States to dispel the notion that American fashion was little more than a copier of Parisian haute couture or a manufacturing megalith that produced only casual and functional clothing. Independent designers, such as Jessie Franklin Turner (1910s to the 1930s) or Elizabeth Hawes and Valentina (beginning in the 1920s), were couturiers who designed mostly custom-made clothing. They were also very few in number.

The idea to promote American talent on a larger scale and beyond the production of exclusive, made-to-order fashion began to gather momentum during the interwar years.  As early as 1932, for example, innovative retailer Dorothy Shaver of Lord and Taylor featured American designers in the store’s advertising as part of her promotion of young talent. Hawes, Clarepotter, and Claire McCardell were a few of the names Shaver advanced. There were also many associations that promoted American fashion in the 1930s: Custom Tailors’ Club, Garment Retailers of America, New York Modern Designers’ Club, Retail Millinery Association, the Fashion Group, and the Fashion Guild. American design was featured in two World’s Fairs: 1933 in Chicago and 1939 in New York. Yet even with these efforts, the influence of the Parisian couture was profound.

The outbreak of World War II cut off access to Parisian haute couture. American manufacturers and magazine editors had no choice but to focus on domestic design. While a comprehensive history of American fashion would be too complex to detail in this essay, most accounts view the period, from 1940 to 1945, as a Golden Age in which many of the best and most important designers this country has ever produced emerged from anonymity. They would become the first members of the CFDA and they included: Norman Norell, Pauline Trigère, Ceil Chapman, and Jo Copeland.

However, after the war ended, French fashion regained much of the ground it had lost in the 1940s. Because of the Parisian resurgence, the rise of American designers, especially those who did not own their own companies, began to fade. According to designers who witnessed the inception of the CFDA, such as Bill Blass,  in the early 1960s there was a clear moment during which the beginnings of a change could be felt on Seventh Avenue, New York’s fashion epicenter. Blass echoed the sentiments of Eleanor Lambert, the woman who had made it her life’s mission to change the status quo on Seventh Avenue. She stated that a designer “must above all have encouragement to pursue fashion as an artistic as well as commercial endeavor, to be lifted above ‘hack work’ when his talents warrant.”

Few Americans were interested in or even aware of the plight of fashion designers at the time. Lambert, understanding their malaise, enlivened the story of American fashion in an effort to change the collective mindset. In testimony before Congress on Thursday, October 31, 1963, she elucidated what can almost be described as the Hollywood version of fashion design history. “We think of creative American fashion as a recent development. Some people date it after the last war; she said, “it has actually been more like the 100 years war. Probably the first gun in the war of fashion independence was fired by the celebrated anti-slavery crusader, Harriet Beecher Stowe.”  Lambert quoted an 1848 essay by Mrs. Stowe, who wrote “‘. . . the genius of American life is for simplicity, and absence of ostentation . . . it requires an army of girls to emancipate us from the decrees and tyrannies of alien fashion . . . Forward, girls! You can, if you will, yet save the republic!’”

The remainder of her speech was more temperate, but she continued to stress the need for both an independent American voice in fashion as well as an environment in which to cultivate high-end talent and to promote individual designers by name. Those designers who had emerged from the manufacturers’ backrooms to make names for themselves in America—first Norell and Trigère, and later, Bill Blass, and Geoffrey Beene—were part of a wave that followed the template set by Claire McCardell in the late 1930s. With Lambert, they were casting Americans designers as “creative” and original personalities who could rival the reigning Parisian couturiers as well as the Italian Alta Moda and ready-to-wear creators.

The comparison to Europe, and France in particular, was important. Fashion and the creation, production, and exportation of luxury goods were vital components of France’s economy and culture. Consequently, fashion in France has long been a respected craft, with its creators viewed as talented artisans. In a national effort to advance its high-end fashion, or haute couture, the French devised governing bodies charged with missions such as protecting original creations. One body, the celebrated Chambre Syndicale de la haute couture, set forth rules for all its members (such as size of the workshop and the number of original designs each season) but also provided legal support and copyright protection.

The French fashion establishment also fostered the idea of the fashion designer as artist. As early as the eighteenth century, the great marchande de mode (or stylist/couturiere) to Queen Marie Antoinette, Rose Bertin, pioneered the idea of a fashion designer as a creative genius and celebrity. So elevated was her status that she was known as the Ministre de la Mode in Paris. Over the next two centuries, couturiers from Charles Fredrick Worth to Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel to Yves Saint Laurent, would follow Bertin’s lead and become lauded creators.

There was no such system or culture in the United States. In fact, American designers not only had to fight French fashion dominance, they had to battle manufacturing establishments that undermined them in their own back yard. One example was the New York Dress Institute (NYDI.) Formed in 1940 as a joint venture between hundreds of clothing manufacturers of New York City and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), its purpose was to advance the sales of dresses and clothing made in New York by promoting the city as the fashion center of the country. “Facing wartime recession, and aware that the garment industry was the city’s single largest employer, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was anxious to see the city take advantage of Paris’s demise to ensure its own ascent.”  A specially-made label, “New York Creation,” was designed and sewn into dresses to identify the products of members. The label was a symbol of  patriotism as well as a source of tax revenue—but not a celebration of the designer.

The NYDI hired Eleanor Lambert as its publicist; she swiftly and shrewdly suggested that the campaign be based on designers, not manufacturers. Lambert, who had worked to promote artists before she moved into fashion, had to wrestle control from the very people who had hired her. Although manufacturers were the public faces of apparel companies, Lambert understood that it would be necessary to create a “cult of personality” around designers if New York was to become a fashion epicenter. Lambert implemented her strategy in three steps.

First, she re-interpreted the 10 Best-Dressed Women list that had been started in the 1930s, by Mainbocher,  a couturier who was born in the United States but began his career in Paris. Upon Mainbocher’s return to the United States at the onset of World War II, it was renamed the “International Best Dressed List.” Soon after its reincarnation, women from around the world vied for inclusion to this increasingly prestigious “club” of style leaders. The “List” was important because it was dominated by American names and, more important, was generated in New York City by American critics closely tied to the local fashion industry.

Next, Lambert created the Coty Awards in 1942. These prestigious American fashion awards became the industry’s gold standard. (The rise and fall of the Coty Awards and the creation of its “successor,” the CFDA awards, are discussed in greater detail later.)

Finally, Lambert was responsible for organizing for what would become known as New York Press Week in the early 1940s, which, in turn, coincided with the creation of the New York Couture Group. Around 1941 (according to most sources), the highest quality garment manufacturers in the city, such as Harvey Berin and Maurice Rentner, became an exclusive off-shoot of the NYDI and called themselves The Couture Group. The Couture Group was the sponsor of New York Press Week. In a condensed time frame and in a centralized location, leading fashion editors from newspapers across the country were brought to New York to see the latest seasonal collections. National press coverage expanded because of the newly coordinated and centralized presentations.

Although manufactures continued to hold sway on Seventh Avenue for the next two decades, the increased prestige of New York as a style and fashion center led to a shift in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Arnold Scassi recalled the heady atmosphere in New York on the cusp of change:

“Everyone was kind of shocked [at the CFDA’s inception] because it was like stepping away from another group that was bigger [the Couture Group] and kind of like what the CFDA is today . . . A great many of people in that group were people who went to Paris and bought from the couture to make line-for-line copies. . . We were separating ourselves from the manufacturers, which was more of a reaction to Eleanor [Lambert] than to the Couture Group, because Eleanor was very much in the forefront of the other group until she formed the CFDA. The main thing was to take the creative designers away [from the manufacturers and the Couture Group] and ‘creative’ was a very important word at that moment. When she did that, it [the CFDA] really took off.”

Birth of the CFDA

As Scassi noted, the person who did more than any other to create and ultimately advance American fashion and the CFDA early on was Eleanor Lambert. “All I did was start it,” noted the publicist. “I’ve always said that getting people together as a community helps further their identity as a whole. We were a group of people of equal qualifications and equal thoughts about moving forward.” This quote is interesting. It demonstrates Lambert’s feigned humility (“all I did . . .”) while she takes rightful credit for “starting” the CFDA. Also, she places herself alongside the designers she cultivated and represented, referring to them collectively as “we,” and lays claim to having “equal” ability and mindset.

A born showwoman, Lambert was fashion’s first impresario. It was she who approached Senator Jacob Javits of New York about advancing fashion on a nationally-recognized platform.  Javits then joined forces with another charismatic political, Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island. Born in New York City, Pell was chairman of the special subcommittee on the arts (that, in turn, was under the Committee on Public Welfare). Following the lead set forth by President John F. Kennedy, the two senators sought to establish the National Council on the Arts. Lambert pushed to include fashion and have it validated as an acceptable form of American art, alongside painting, music, and dance. However, as the story goes, that would require the involvement of a not-for-profit (i.e. artistic) organization, rather than a commercial industry or business enterprise.

The CFDA fulfilled the “artistic” requirement. In October of 1962, Pell and Javits invited Lambert to appear at an open hearing on the establishment of an arts council. At the senators’ urging, Lambert rallied a group of designers to establish the CFDA in order to “further the position of fashion design as a recognized branch of American art and culture” and “to advance its artistic and professional standards.”  Its charter was filed on December 6, 1962.

The original founding members were a small, exclusive group of twenty: Bill Blass, Donald Brooks, Betty Carol, Jane Derby (who famously hired the young Oscar de la Renta), Luis Estevez, David Evins (a leading shoe designer), Rudi Gernreich, Bud Kilpatrick, Helen Lee, Jean Louis, John Moore, Norman Norell, Sylvia Pedlar, Sarmi, Arnold Scaasi, Adele Simpson, Gustave Tassell, Pauline Trigère, Sydney Wragge (who began as an assistant for the late, legendary Claire McCardell), and Ben Zuckerman.

The following month, January 1963, Wragge chaired the first official meeting of the CFDA. He was also elected its president, a post he would hold for the next two years. In a mere few weeks, the organization had grown more than twofold. New members included: Stephanie Cartwright, Ceil Chapman, Jo Copeland, Lilly Daché, Florence Eiseman, Anne Fogarty, James Galanos, Sophie Gimbel, Mr. John, Margaret Jerrold, Mabel Julianelli, Anne Klein, David Kidd, Richard Koret, William Lord, Vincent Mante-Sano, Vera Maxwell, Jose Martin, Marie McCarthy, Mollie Parnis, Sara Ripault, Leo Ritter, Helen Rose, Roxane, Karen Stark, Jacques Tiffeau, John Weitz, and Andrew Woods.

While some of the designers listed above have faded into obscurity, others ascended to the pantheon of fashion history, and their hallmark designs conjure up instantly recognizable images. This CFDA designer collective, including the well-known and the obscure, gave each of these American creators a platform on which to compete with their European-based counterparts.

The Early Years, 1963-1970

One of Lambert’s early efforts to widen fashion’s appeal was to stage a televised fashion show. Taped on location at the US Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair site in Queens, the work of leading CFDA members was presented by Nancy White, editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar. The show aired on WNEW-TV, Metropolitan Broadcast, on Monday, July 6, 1964, at 10pm. Not only was the show a “tribute” to Senator Javits, it featured a 30 member Honorary Committee that included the Senator’s wife, Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., and Lambert herself. More modest shows followed, such as one hosted by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, entitled “The Contemporary Art of American Fashion.” Led by Lambert and co-chairmen Bill Blass and Donald Brooks, five thematic fashion shows were presented on November 15, 1966.

Most presentations were meant for smaller audiences but were more elaborate and ambitious in scope. In the fall of 1963, the CDFA presented the “American Pageant of Fashion and the Arts.” The event was held on December 29, 1963 at the Waldorf Astoria Ballroom. The New York Herald Tribune   reported that a “glittering list of celebrities, social and stage, modeled fashions by the CFDA,” and the pageant “benefited both the National Cultural Center and the American Shakespeare Festival and Academy.” The prologue was delivered by Helen Hayes in a Ceil Chapman design, while dance (Paul Taylor’s Aureole), Shakespeare (excerpts from The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream), and thematic fashion presentations (“Moments in Fashion”) were intermingled throughout the evening. Artwork by the likes of Louise Nevelson served as backdrops. Actors such as Elizabeth Ashley and Robert Redford shared the stage with singer and pianist Bobby Short; the celebrity models including Mia Farrow, Sally Kirkland, Geraldine Stutz, and Betty Furness; and designs were by Norell, Trigère, Gus Tassell, Jacques Tiffeau, Anne Klein Donald Brooks, Bill Blass for Maurice Retner, Rudi Gernreich, Ann Fogarty, Arnold Scassi, and Luis Estevez.

Similar programming—the linking of fashion with the arts—continued throughout the 1960s. One the highlights was an evening of ballet and fashion, where on Sunday, September 25, 1966, the CFDA hosted an evening to benefit the American Ballet Theater. Entitled “Fashion and Broadway Salute the ABT,” the show was staged at the St. James Theater and hosted by Lauren Bacall, who wore Norell. Ballets such as George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, Jerome Robbins’s Fancy Free, and Agnes de Mille’s Skating Scene from The Wind in the Mountains, alternated with fashion shows, with titles such as “All Black” and “The High Pastels,” that highlighted works by CFDA members. Senator Javits and other attendees enthusiastically praised the event for its professional quality, as well as the beauty of both the dance and the fashion components.

According to a letter from Harold Taylor, President of the Board of Trustees of American Ballet Theater, to Eleanor Lambert,  the evening was also a fund-raising success. “You raised a large sum of money,” he wrote, “for one of the great ballet companies, and you brought together the fashion industry and the art of dance in ways beneficial to both.” The exact amount of money raised is unknown. However, individual tickets cost $25, $50, and $75 each, and one-page ads in the souvenir program, “A Fashion Show in Dance” probably cost around $250. The dozens of advertisers included leading department stores and design houses.

One of the reasons the evening was so successful was the fact that Jacqueline Kennedy was the event’s honorary chair. Lambert understood the power of celebrity and Mrs. Kennedy was one of the most recognized and admired women in the world. But the more subtle power of Kennedy’s participation could be found in her role as a champion of the arts and high culture. She and President Kennedy helped to raise the importance of art and design in America and to accelerate it acceptance. Ballet, like fashion, had once seemed an unlikely art form to flourish in this country. The product of the great courts of Europe, from Louis XIV to the Tsars of Russia, it was as seemingly elite and un-American as anything could be. Yet New York became the classical ballet epicenter of the world during the 1960s, and dance schools and companies flourished around the country. The desire to promote fashion was part of this cultural upsurge and Lambert, who had strong connections to art since her early days as a publicist as well as an uncanny ability to read the zeitgeist, took full advantage of this momentum.

Although it was not part of the CFDA’s original mission, the organization began to foster educational programming for the next generation of designers. The sponsor of several prestigious and generous scholarship funds today, the CFDA’s original efforts to create educational opportunities happened almost by chance. Lambert recalled one of the first meetings convened by the United States Senate for the new Special Subcommittee on the Arts, and headed by Nancy Hanks.  Lambert had found herself uncharacteristically at a loss for words. As dignitaries from various fields spoke eloquently about the need for public support of art, Lambert fell silent. “Maggie [Agnes] de Mille” for example, represented dance and was brilliant,” noted Lambert. “I’ve never heard such an eloquent speech about one artist by another. She wanted the council to pay for a sabbatical for Jerome Robbins, which was approved, and it was during that time that he choreographed the ballets Dances and a Gathering and the Schoenberg Variations.”

After suffering from such intimidations for most the day, Lambert was finally asked by Hanks if there wasn’t anything the council could do for fashion. Lambert said, “I don’t know, but I would like $25,000 to establish a location at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and try to get an American showing of clothing there.” Lambert was quickly able to organize one of the CFDA’s first important events, which brought together, on Saturday, March 26, 1966, museum specialists, curators, educators, and a few designers for a panel discussion entitled “Fashion and Costume in Relation to the National Council on the Arts.”

Bill Blass, Jo Copeland, Mr. John, Sylvia Pedlar, and Mollie Parnis were joined by representatives from institutions that were highly influential in developing fashion studies in the United States. The educators and curators included: George Bayless and Ann Keagy of the Parsons School of Design; the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s textile curator Jean Mailey and the Costume Institute’s Polaire Weisman; Robert “Bob” Riley of the Brooklyn Museum and later founder of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (Weisman and Riley were also “honorary” members of the CFDA); Alice Beer of the Cooper Hewitt; Alphonse Cavallo the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and representatives from the Dallas Museum of Fashion, Howard University, the Smithsonian, and the Rhode Island School of Design. The panelists discussed what could be done to further education at institutions outside of New York, such as creating documentaries of leading designers, filming runway shows, the equivalent of an “artist-in-residence program for fashion designers, a national program for designs to travel and speak at schools, and a government-funded museum tour of the best examples for leading designer collections.”

Ann Keagy, the legendary Parsons instructor, expressed strong support for documentaries and fashion history lectures. Robert “Bob” Riley, the fashion-designer-turned curator (first of the Brooklyn Museum and later the Fashion Institute of Technology), concurred with Keagy and expressed his belief that design students needed access to historical objects. He stated that “most of the students have never seen really fine clothes, not of yesterday and certainly never the best of today. It is kind of like graduating an art major who has never seen Rembrandt or looked at a Picasso.”

This panel discussion laid the groundwork for the first CFDA-sponsored museum exhibition. In 1967, the CFDA was able to match the National Art Council’s funds for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. Entitled “The Art of Fashion,” it was on view for ten weeks and was an unprecedented success. It combined live models in contemporary dress by CFDA members with historical objects mounted on mannequins from the Museum’s permanent collection, all set within twelve galleries. Joseph Noble, the museum’s administrative director, said at the time that it was one the best-attended exhibitions in the Metropolitan’s history, drawing 180,093 visitors. Nobel formally thanked the CFDA in a letter dated November 13, 1967, for the “gift of $25,000 which helped make this exhibition possible, and  . . . for the unswerving devotion of so many of your members in helping to arrange for the contemporary fashion section.”

The exhibition actually had loftier goals. One critic noted that “the purpose of the exhibit is to treat fashion as great design, as an art form rather than a historical document.”  In the same article, the Metropolitan’s director, Thomas P. F. Hoving stated that “quite a few people think that American designers are leading . . . the world. I’m one of them.”

The exhibition concept traveled further afield, to the Cincinnati Art Museum. On February 27, 1969, show was launched with a celebratory, fund-raising dinner, in the museum’s costume wing. “Art of American Fashion” was so successful that a second version was organized in Cincinnati two years later and then another in Philadelphia in 1970. Lambert told journalist Eric Wilson that the CFDA “did some shows out of town, for charity. We tried to make people throughout the country understand the meaning of fine clothes and the personality of designers. We tried to humanize the idea of high-fashion American clothes.”

One the leading mandates of the CFDA today is to provide educational scholarships for students and funding for bourgeoning designers. Because the first scholarship was not created until 1986, many assumed the organization had no prior record of such endeavors. There is evidence to the contrary. On September 12, 1968, the CFDA launched a program for disadvantaged youth—the Urban Project. A letter housed in the Lambert/CDFA archives at FIT states that “no problem is more pressing these days than the plight of the underprivileged, under-educated people who live in urban areas.” In an effort to help young girls from poorer neighborhoods in the city, Lambert suggested that the CFDA start by choosing about twenty girls “with interest in fashion.” Each would take a course of study, about two to three hours every other week for a total of fourteen sessions, in order to “acquaint them with every aspect of our industry.” Instruction included museum visits, trips to designs schools and manufacturing centers, individual counseling, and a sewing project. CFDA mentors included Arnold Scaasi, Ann Fogarty, Donald Brooks, Vera Maxwell, and Victor Costa.

Educational outreach was but one example of the many diverse projects that the CFDA undertook in its first decade. The advancement of education, specifically the rise of college degrees for students training to become designers, and the relationship forged between schools and museums, led the way for later scholarship programs sponsored by the CFDA over the coming years.

Lambert was an active CFDA member from the organization’s inception in 1962 until the early 1990s, and she was an honorary member until her death in 2003. The organization recognized her contributions. In 1988, she received the CFDA Award for Lifetime Achievement in the cause of fashion and in 1993 she received the Council’s Industry Tribute Award. In 2001, the CFDA created The Eleanor Lambert Award to honor and to celebrate unique contributions by individuals to the world of fashion.

Growth of the CFDA: 1970-1990

In the 1960s and 1970s, the CFDA remained a somewhat insular group that had, in the words of former president Stan Herman, “the feel of an exclusive club.”  It was also organized in a somewhat laissez-faire manner. Annual meetings were held at the elegant Four Seasons restaurant on East 52nd Street, (as were celebrity and designer luncheons.) The business of the day was discussed, along with plans for regional fashion shows to promote New York designers around the country. Such events were fancy but not costly. According to Lambert, the CFDA was not required (or even asked) to spend much money. The cachet of its designers meant that they could  ask for “important locations, and get them,” at little or no cost.

The CFDA’s offices were based out of Lambert’s public relations firm at 32 East 57th Street. “The thing was so informal that I called upon people who I thought were leaders and asked them to do the work,” explained Lambert. For example, the Council’s eagle-eyed secretary and treasurer, David Evins (a leading shoe designer who had worked for Hermès and was one of the first to go from being a ghost designer to the head of his eponymous company), made sure each member paid annual dues of $250.

Although the Lambert archives in the FIT Library’s Special Collections is extensive and contains many letters, telegrams, and notes detailing the creation of special events, the day-to-day business and the efforts of many of the CFDA’s members, including its presidents, are less well documented. There is scant record, for example, of Sydney Wragge’s tenure from1963-1965. The same can be said for the presidency of Herbert Kasper, 1977-1979. Kasper, in a 2007 interview with journalist Rosemary Feitelberg, did recognize the importance of the CFDA. “People are producing and selling clothes all over the world today, and the CFDA has grown at the same level. It’s become more important within the framework of the country, and especially New York.”

Norman Norell, who was the president for nearly eight years, from 1965-1973, and a key participant in early CFDA fashion shows, was sparing in the number of his correspondences with Lambert; there was also paucity in his prose. Even Bill Blass, who served as the president from 1980-1981, left little documentation and did not mention the organization in his 2002 autobiography, Bare Blass.

The office of the presidency has even been referred to as an “ancillary post or an excuse for a martini.”  The lack of archival material supports the assessment by many that Lambert was the de facto leader of the CFDA in its first two decades, regardless of who might have been president, of this small, exclusive group.

In the two years of Mary McFadden’s presidency (1982-1983), she noted one big accomplishment: she persuaded Eleanor Lambert to release all the organization’s papers to the officers of the CFDA. The organization took control of the papers by hiring a secretary and therefore its business dealings. McFadden stated, “We [the CFDA] were better able to run it because now it was in the hands of the members.”

It was under the leadership of President Oscar de la Renta that the CFDA would again change. He was the president from 1973 to1976, and then again from 1987 to 1989. Some have noted that de la Renta also had influence over Carolyne Roehm’s tenure as president from 1989 to1991, as she was his disciple and former employee. Furthermore, he was viewed as being the person who filled Lambert’s shoes and held considerable sway over the CFDA, even during the years he was not the president. De la Renta was an integral part of the group that created the CFDA awards as well as the first fashion scholarship program.

When Oscar de la Renta came to Seventh Avenue in 1964, he first worked for Antonio del Castillo, under the Elizabeth Arden label, before being hired by Jane Derby. While working for Derby, de la Renta’s name began to appear on the company’s label, a sign of the changing times. Shortly thereafter, he won the Coty award two years in a row, 1967 and 1968, and firmly established himself as one of country’s leading fashion creators.

In 1973, de la Renta became the president of the CFDA, succeeding Norman Norell’s six year tenure.

The highlight of de la Renta’s early leadership was the fashion show spectacular, billed as a divertessment àVersailles, held on November 28, 1973. It was not a CFDA event per se, but it was put together by Lambert (featuring some of her clients) and her connections to the curator of the palace, Gerard van der Kemp, and the socialite Baroness Guy “Marie-Hélène” de Rothschild. The Versailles event was a face-to-face fashion competition between five titans of French haute couture—Yves St. Laurent, Marc Bohan for Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, Emanuel Ungaro and Pierre Cardin—and five Americans—Anne Klein, Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Halston, and Stephen Burrows.

While the French poured money into the lavish production—which included dancing by Rudolf Nureyev, a rocket ship for Cardin, floats pulled by live animals, and dancers from the Crazy Horse nude revue—it was the Americans “who stole the show.”  So elaborate were the French sets that the clothes were almost obliterated. The clean and simple lines of the American fashions were highlighted by a stellar performance from Liza Minnelli, as well as the novel presence of several vivacious African-American models. Journalist Enid Nemy put it succinctly in the title of her article about the event: “Fashion at Versailles: French Were Good, Americans Were Great.”

The success of the America contingent was astonishing to many, including its participants. One initial reason for this was the bickering between the designers, especially a rift between Halston and Anne Klein. Klein, noted Donna Karan (her assistant at the time), was treated “as if she did not belong there” because “she was sportswear”  and that she was included only because she was Lambert’s client. Another reason was that many elements of the American presentation, from sets to rehearsal time, were not properly executed (due to translation problems), were deliberately undermined by the French, or were further fraught with infighting amongst the Americans. Problems aside, the Americans were fresh, and they recalibrated their own sense of identity. Bill Blass recalled:

“I thought I understood the lean, agile, racy glamour of American clothes. Yet, no one was prepared for the shock, the next day, of seeing them on a bare foreign stage.  . .  and on skinny black girls . . . But it was the honesty, the pure simplicity, of our presentation—which lasted only thirty-five minutes compared to the two hours for the French—that brought the audience to its feet and made [Marc] Bohan later say: ‘After we saw the Americans, we looked like idiots.’”

This flamboyant and whimsical event, and many other CFDA fashion presentations, was organized quickly with little long-term planning. The tiny but powerful hierarchy supported this blend of grand ideas and slapdash planning. De la Renta confirmed the informality of the CFDA’s interworkings: “I operated from my office with my secretary doing all the work and a legal firm doing the accounts, but the designers always played a part in forming its direction.”  The Lambert archives backup de la Renta’s assertion that he relied on his own staff and did much to advance the causes the CFDA supported.

In a number of letters dating to the early 1970s, de la Renta appeares to have been especially active in supporting the annual funding-raising dinner for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. In a letter to members dated November 27, 1973, de la Renta noted that the “CFDA has been asked to be responsible for only 200 of the 500 tickets issued for the evening’s dinner and private preview” and that the $150 price had a tax deduction value of $100. In a letter from the Met’s director, Thomas Hoving, dated March 12, 1974, de la Renta was personally thanked for what can be assumed to have been that year’s net of $54,693 (a memorandum dated January 24, 1974, noted that the gross was $77,860, less expenses totaling $23,167).

Furthermore, de la Renta personally oversaw the funding of overtime payments to insure that a documentary film on Cristobal Balenciaga (the subject of the Costume Institute’s monographic exhibition) would run each Saturday for the duration of the show. His report dated March 27, 1973, went before the board of the CFDA, during a meeting held in de la Renta’s showroom.

In between his presidential terms, de la Renta advocated for the idea that the organization should start it own awards ceremony. Like many people, he felt that the Coty Awards had become too linked commercially to the fragrances of its sponsor, an assessment based on the company’s related advertising campaigns. The designer stated to journalist Eric Wilson, “I felt there was a conflict of interest. It was like a little clique headed by Grace Mirabella of Vogue, and they kept giving awards every year to Geoffrey Beene. I strongly felt that we as an industry, we as designers, should be in control. Like the Oscars is [sic] part of the movie industry, I felt this [relationship] should be more formal.”

One of the most important developments in the history of the CFDA was the creation of the organization’s own fashion awards. From the early to mid-1980s, it would supplant The Coty American Fashion Critics’ Awards. A fixture for decades, the first Coty Awards ceremony was held in January 1943, and the winner of the Winnies (nickname for the womenswear awards) was Norman Norell. The Winnies were awarded only to designers based in America, unlike the Neiman Marcus Fashion Awards (1938-1995), which honored designers from around the world.

In their heyday, the Winnies were considered among the most prestigious awards in the field and were viewed as the fashion equivalent “of the Oscars and the Tonys.” The Coty Awards ran until 1984, but began to lose importance around 1979. One key reason cited for their demise was the belief that designers could not even be nominated if they did not have a fragrance deal with Coty, and especially not if they had licensed perfumes with competing fragrance companies. Halston cited Coty’s blatant over-commercialization of the show. The demise of the Coty awards was further hastened by the rise of the newly created CFDA awards in 1980.

Journalist Leonard McCants noted that the CFDA decided to host its own televised awards program, not unlike the Academy Awards. The CFDA opted for a more democratic and informed selection process than had been in place for the Winnies. “Instead of the reported 90-member jury for Coty’s ‘Winnies,’ most of whom, designers complained, never saw all of the collections they voted on, the CFDA’s nominating panel includes 15 fashion journalists and retailers who see every collection. That group will then hand down a list of nominees for the full body to vote on.”

The first awards ceremony, in 1980, did not go over well. Bill Blass, the President of the CFDA at the time, set off a firestorm when he declared that all three nominees for women’s apparel—Geoffrey Beene, Calvin Klein, and Perry Ellis—would be named co-winners. While the intention was to avoid “the spectacle of prominent designers losing in front of a national television audience,” it led to a revolt. Beene rejected the award, noting that “losing, if indeed that might have been the case, is a great part of sportsmanship, but there isn’t any sport involved in this. The industry needs a major award for its merit, not its emotion.” Halston described the event as “a mess” and a “damn shame.”

The setback was short-lived however, because the CFDA awards would garner great attention by the end of their first decade. Attendees included Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, and 1988 special honoree, First Lady Nancy Reagan. Furthermore, Lambert left Coty to orchestrate the new industry awards, which were free of sponsorship or commercial affiliation. After more than forty years, the Coty awards were discontinued. In 1985, Donald Flannery, the senior vice-president of Pfizer, Inc., Coty’s parent company, noted that they had fulfilled their mission: the promotion of American fashion design and designers.

The CFDA awards would expand and change over the next three decades but retain the promise of giving American designers, as well as select international colleagues, a celebratory platform of recognition. In the 1990s, attendance at the awards ceremony would swell above 1,000. During the early to mid-1990s, the years that the Hearst publishing company sponsored the event, the glamour quotient would also rise. For example, the late, English-born editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, Liz Tilberis, brought Princess Diana to the event in 1995. First Lady Hilary Rodham Clinton was also a guest that evening. Although the number of attendees would fall in the 2000s, the event remains one of the most important and glittering awards ceremonies in fashion.

Fashion Shows and Philanthropy: 1991-2006

Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing into the 1990s, the CFDA would undertake programs and events beyond its fashion awards that would change it radically. Interestingly, these seismic changes were not premeditated, as the programs had outcomes that far exceeded their original, humble intent. The events were initially viewed as both a way to continue support for worthy causes (a designer sample sale called 7th on Sale) and to support the needs of the council’s constituency (centralization of New York Fashion week, known as 7th on Sixth). Nonetheless, after implementing the wildly successful sale and organizing the ever-expanding fashion week, the CFDA needed a team of sophisticated professionals to oversee its growth.

It is important to note that the CFDA also became a bifurcated organization. On the one hand, it created a separate foundation in 19__ to oversee its philanthropic activities. The CFDA Foundation, Inc. is a separate, not-for-profit entity organized to mobilize the membership to raise funds for charitable causes. Through the Foundation, the CFDA created and now manages Fashion Targets Breast Cancer; more recently is began to address the issue of model health with The CFDA Health Initiative. Its most high-profile events have been those created to raise funds for HIV/AIDS organizations. On the other hand, the CFDA remained a world-recognized trade organization that adhered closely to its founding mission.

Not surprisingly, these changes required great effort and were by no means uniformly supported by the membership. Yet, under new and enlightened leadership, the CFDA bloomed and laid a sturdy foundation for what it has become today.

With the exception of Eleanor Lambert, no other member of the CFDA has made as indelible an imprint on the organization as Stan Herman. For nearly sixteen years, from 1991 to 2006, Herman served as the organization’s longest reigning president. (His second closest competitor for the title was Norman Norell, who held the position for eight years.) Herman’s quiet but important work for the CFDA began decades before he assumed the mantle of the presidency, shortly after he became a member in 1967. To this day, Herman remains an omnipresent fixture in the organization.

Longevity in the CFDA is by no means Herman’s only claim to fame. By 1998, before he was even halfway through his tenure, the organization had grown and changed significantly. As journalist Joyce Wadler noted:

“Mr. Herman has had his greatest success, however, as an organizer. Since becoming the unpaid president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America nearly eight years ago, Mr. Herman has made it a force in New York. He oversaw the creation of Seventh on Sixth, consolidating fashion shows that had been scattered throughout the city and bringing them to one media-friendly spot in Bryant Park. Under his leadership the council has raised $10 million for ADIS research and $5 million for work on breast cancer. Next month, the United Hospital Fund will give Stan Herman its Distinguished Community Award.”

While Herman made an indelible mark on the fashion community with the CFDA, it is ironic that he has been less celebrated as designer. He is prodigiously talented as both a creator and a businessman. Winner of three Coty fashion awards, Herman was labeled the “people’s designer.” Early in his career, he specialized in stylish yet affordable women’s clothing (designed under the label “Mr. Mort). More recently, he designed a bevy of practical wear that is worn by millions. Some examples are QVC’s top-selling chenille robes, uniforms for companies from MacDonald’s to Avis to FedEx, and even hospital gowns that do not reveal the patient’s behind.

Herman’s path to becoming a designer and subsequently heading the CFDA began inauspiciously. A native of Passaic, New Jersey, he first studied design at the University of Cincinnati and then joined the army. By 19__, he headed for the Big Apple and quickly gained employment. Herman joined the CFDA five years after it was founded and his membership was sponsored by his good friend, Perry Ellis. Almost right away, Herman was elected to the board. By the early 1990s, he had agreed to become its president as “nobody else wanted the job.”  He was elected by unanimous consent.

Perhaps the only missing ingredient in Herman’s personality and career has been his lack of self-promotion. Gregarious, articulate, and eternally optimistic, he did not initially seek a position as publicly visible as the president of the CFDA. Yet, four months after his partner of 39 years, Gene Horowitz, passed away, Herman took the job. He stated that “I could have dissolved, I could have afforded to fade away and do nothing, and I didn’t want to.”

Under Herman’s presidency, the CFDA would undergo dramatic alterations of its structure. One major change was the great expansion of its scholarship funds and especially its philanthropic projects. Another was the centralization of the bi-annual fashion week presentations and dramatic expansion of New York fashion week. Third, during his term, there was a change in bylaws allowing presidents to serve more than the originally mandated, two-year log, non-consecutive term. Finally, there was the hiring of executive directors: first was Fern Mallis (1991-2001); Peter Arnold (2001-2005) followed; and Steven Kolb began his tenure in 2006.

The pivotal event that recalibrated the CFDA occurred months before the board’s unanimous selection of Herman as president. In November of 1990, in partnership with Vogue magazine, the CFDA launched 7th on Sale. It was a huge “designer sample sale” that raised $4.2 million for the New York City AIDS Fund. Comprised of several mini-specialty stores, the event lasted four days. Merchandise was donated mostly by CFDA members. Major New York retailers participated, together with thousands of volunteers, and the event was attended by over 15,000 people. Less than two years later, in September of 1992, 7th on Sale raised $2.6 million for DIFFA to distribute to San Francisco and Bay Area AIDS organizations.  In 1995, the CFDA Foundation and Vogue presented 7th on Sale/The Return to New York. Despite its success, the sale was discontinued for a decade. Renamed 7th on Sale Online, the event—billed as the world’s largest sample sale—launched in 2005. With sponsorship from Dolce & Cabana, Kenneth Cole Productions, and Polo Ralph Lauren, the CFDA formed a partnership with eBay. To date, 7th on Sale has raised more than $17,000,000 for AIDS organizations.

The success of the first sale was both a blessing and a new hardship for the CFDA. The organization was simply not able, according to Herman, to adequately manage such a sudden, large influx of money. An experienced executive director was needed. That person turned out to be Fern Mallis.

Mallis actually joined the CFDA before Herman was elected president, but Herman and designer Monica Tilley were the members who had comprised the search committee for the newly created post of executive director. Mallis was their clear choice. Her arrival at the CFDA came shortly after the highly successful 7th on Sale event. Carolyne Roehm had just stepped down as president, with no successor in place. Furthermore, the CFDA’s director (and only paid staffer at the time), Robert Raymond, was not rehired when his contract expired on January 1, 1990. One of the reasons cited for this decision was Raymond’s “demand for a ‘substantial’ salary increase” because he was credited as being “largely responsible for many of the council’s recent successes.”  The void left by Roehm and Raymond gave the CFDA a chance to reorganize. Mallis was officially approved by the board and hired in 1991 on her birthday, March 26.

Mallis, a Brooklyn native, was a public relations and special events professional who had worked most closely with interior designer professionals and had organized fund-raising events with groups like DIFFA. Although she was not a fashion professional, Mallis did have some experience in the field. Her first job was a brief stint at Mademoiselle: Mallis was one of 20 college students chosen to be guest editors.  (One of the events organized for the students by the magazine was a trip to Mr. Mort to meet the designer—Stan Herman.) In her ten-year career at the CFDA, Mallis worked on all of its events and programs. Described as a font of ideas, “Fern never thought small, she always thought big” and “it was inspiring to be around her.”  Of all her successes, Mallis’s primary legacy and most important imprint has been the growth of the fashion week shows, 7th on Sixth.

At the time Herman became president, one of the most important but contentious issues facing the CFDA’s members was where to stage their bi-annual press week shows. The merit of showing their collections in a central location was hotly debated. The creation of a centralized fashion show locale did as much as any single entity to raise the CFDA’s profile, challenge its mission, force its considerable expansion, and lead to its restructuring.

While New York fashion week had been an entity for decades prior to Herman’s presidency and Mallis’s arrival, a centralized location to host the designers’ bi-annual runway collections was not. The shows were held at disparate locations throughout New York City; journalists and buyers were forced to run all over town to attend them. Herman and the CFDA devised centralizing New York shows for the 1994 spring-summer collections, presented in November 1993. Entitled 7th on Sixth, the name denoted the heart of the garment industry’s home on Seventh Avenue and its new fashion week home on Sixth Avenue, specifically Bryant Park.

Both Herman and Mallis recalled the single incident that became the catalyst for a centralized fashion show venue: at the Michael Kors show in 1991, the ceiling had started to cave in. This galvanized what had been ongoing complains by the press about safety and the locations that fashion shows were using. Mallis called it the “shot from Sarajevo,” but noted that crowded lofts lost electric power (at Isaac Mizrahi’s show one season, 1200 people sat in the dark until back-up generators could be brought in) and elevators got stuck at major fashion showroom buildings like 550 Seventh Avenue. It was “like a rave,” recalled Mallis.

Assistant Executive Director Lisa Smilor noted that there were so many shows spread across such a vast expanse of New York City that attendees were forced to start their day early, yet traffic delayed arrivals so that the last runway presentation “might begin as late as 11pm due to the efforts to get from one place to another.”  Because of his position as a board member on the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, Herman helped the CFDA secure a one-year lease. The CFDA put up tents on top of a cavernous underground space housing part of the New York Public Library’s holdings, but the Park was unsure of its load-bearing capacity. Thankfully, structural concerns were unwarranted and the shows remained at Bryant Park until they were relocated to the Lincoln Center complex in 2010.

The creation of 7th on Sixth, as well as the coincidental formation of the Fashion Center Business Improvement District, were undeniably successful and “brought a new sense of vitality to the fashion industry here.” The next season’s presentation, in April of 1994, rose from 40 to 59 runway shows in the tents.

Mallis was vital to both the creation and subsequent success of 7th on Sixth, and she was duly praised for her efforts and enthusiasm. However, some felt that the fashion shows distracted the CFDA from its primary mission. Herman noted that some members bluntly told him that 7th on Sixth was “eating up more time” but was not “what we [the CFDA] needed to be doing.” The financial demands and emphasis on profit ran contrary to the-not-for-profit status of CFDA. The organization, therefore, decided to sell 7th on Sixth to International Management Group, or IMG (now called IMG Fashion), in July 2001. After ten years, Mallis left the CFDA in order to run the shows independently.

As it turns out, 2001 proved to be a pivotal year for the CFDA and for the entire New York fashion industry. The terrorist bombings of the World Trade Center on September 11 forced the cancellation of fashion week, as it had been scheduled at the same time. It was in that environment that Peter Arnold replaced Mallis as Executive Director of the CFDA. WWD echoed the sentiments of many when Arnold was appointed, noting that he “was a surprise choice . . . since his background was in law rather than fashion or public relations.” Yet Arnold achieved success. In addition to focusing “on the core mission of looking after members and bringing about relationships with young designers,” he oversaw the launch of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award (to assist burgeoning companies) with the help of Anna Wintour and “considerably expanded the organization’s Fashion Targets Breast Cancer project.”

Steven Kolb, the current executive director and Arnold’s successor, views Arnold as an important transitional figure. He was realistic and organized and he “buttoned [the CFDA] up” and “made it a legit, running organization.” For example, Arnold partnered with the 7th on Sixth fashion shows to benefit the designers and did not treat it as a purely profit-oriented enterprise.

Arnold had never planned on having a long tenure at the CFDA. In an interview shortly after he announced his resignation in the summer of 2005, Arnold stated, “it was never part of my long-term strategy.” He openly noted his interest in becoming the business head of a major fashion company. In the same interview, he said he “would use the job [at the CFDA] as some platform from which I would go to a design house. In my time at the CFDA, opportunities have come my way that I have considered… The opportunity to join John [Varvartos] was one that I couldn’t say no to.”

A year later, Herman stepped down as president. His official retirement party was described as Stan’s Sweet ’16.’ The large CFDA crowd that turned out on November 14, 2006, was considered “a testament to the man’s popularity” and was there to recognize “the end of an era.” In speeches, Herman was recognized for his unwavering support of the mission statement—“promoting American fashion and American designers,”—as  well as for “steering the CFDA towards a more democratic organization which embraced new talent.”  Federal Express donated a gift of $100,000 to the CFDA in Herman’s name; Herman had been designing the company’s uniforms for the past 25 years.

The CFDA’s new president, Diane Von Furstenberg spoke glowingly of Herman’s  “loving, caring” nature and shared her assessment that he is “in love with life and that’s why he looks so good.” She also stated: “I look forward to being President. I hope I can bring it to the next phase. I don’t take it lightly. I will need Stan to watch over me and help me.” And Stan Herman remains a strong presence at the CFDA. “I’m not retiring to Boca Raton,” he has said. “Why Would I? It doesn’t get any better than this!”

Globalization and Glamour: 2006 to Now

If Stan Herman is a designer familiar to few people outside the fashion community, the opposite is true of his successor, Diane von Furstenberg. She is a fashion celebrity with a larger-than-life persona that resonates with an aura of glamour and earthy sensuality; she is so recognizable that many know her simply as DVF. Yet von Furstenberg is also remarkably grounded. She is focused on work, family, and philanthropic efforts—and as Stan Herman noted, the CFDA could have elected “nobody but Diane” to succeed him.

Herman was referring to not only von Furstenberg’s celebrity, but also her long track record as a talented and successful designer, as well as her global vision. In addition to making her mark on fashion history, most famously for her iconic wrap dress dating to the 1970s, her life story reads like a version of the Princess Diaries. Born Diane Simone Michelle Halfin in Brussels, Belgium, she was the daughter of immigrant parents from Romania (her father) and Greece (her mother, a holocaust survivor). She studied economics at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and was rechristened the Princess Diane of Fürstenberg (in German she was Diane Prinzessin zu Fürstenberg) when she married into the German princely house and became the wife of Prince Egon of Fürstenberg. Before their divorce, she and the Prince had two children; she is now the grandmother of three. Diane von Furstenberg later remarried; her husband is the business mogul Barry Diller.

Even before her first marriage, von Furstenberg knew she wanted to become a designer. In 1970, with a $30,000 investment, she began designing women’s clothes. “The minute I knew I was about to be Egon’s wife, I decided to have a career. I wanted to be someone of my own, and not just a plain little girl who got married beyond her desserts.”  This quote conveys von Furstenberg’s determination as well as her colorful way with words.

As fashion has become increasing global, so too has the reach of the CFDA. The high level of sophistication that von Furstenberg has brought to the presidency is an invaluable asset. Now a United States citizen, von Furstenberg is multi-lingual and retains a strong European sensibility. As Kolb has noted, “Diane can scream at the Italians in Italian and beg the French in French.” For all her worldliness, von Furstenberg is highly focused on promoting American talent.

As von Furstenberg was assuming the mantle of president in 2006, Steven Kolb began his tenure as the newly-hired executive director. His career-long track record in the not-for-profit and development fields has proven to be the perfect skill set for the job. Like his predecessor but unlike most other members of the organization, Kolb had no professional background in fashion. After earning a Master’s degree in Public Administration from New York University, he began working as a development officer at the American Cancer Society and later became the Senior Associate Director of DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS).  His initiatives to raise money in the fight against HIV and to promote AIDS awareness, education, and prevention utilize both traditional fund-raising tools in addition to a “for-profit business approach” to fund-raising. Kolb’s creative ideas included his “industry percentage” system, in which sales and royalties from assorted goods can be tapped over a period of time.

One of Kolb’s most important initiatives has been the establishment of the Business Service Network (BSN), a community of high profile businesses, both in the fashion industry and outside it, that creates custom programming that meets its members’ needs while providing tangible value to CFDA members.  The purpose of the network is to create strategic access, new business development, licensing opportunities, and jobs, with the shared vision of supporting CFDA members and their businesses.  Additional support services for members include a website, health insurance, legal advocacy, business and technical assistance, industry updates, mentoring, and a series of seminars to train young, emerging designers.

Kolb’s success stems from his skills and the fact that he understands his job. He clearly articulates that the CFDA is an “artists’ guild” akin to those created in the middle ages. Furthermore, its trade organization status is there to support its members. The CFDA is “about the designers” so Kolb and staff are always on-call. His motto, “1-800-CFDA” means we are customer service.

The person who works most closely with Kolb at the CFDA is Associate Executive Director, Lisa Smilor. Of the dozen professionals now working for the organization, Smilor has one of the longest running tenures. Hired in 1986, while the CFDA’s first scholarship named for the late designer Perry Ellis was being formalized, Smilor was brought on to spearhead both educational initiatives and programs to support CFDA members. Throughout the 1990s, she was the aesthetic and altruistic balance to the increasing commercialization of the fashion shows. After twenty-five year at the CFDA, Smilor still views support of great talent as a personal calling. Herman noted that she “lights up like a flare”  when she sees great work, be it by an emerging talent or an established name. Many people have noticed her nurturing and supporting role. Smilor has eschewed working on the commercial side of fashion, and her commitment to the CFDA remains steadfast. “I am clearly not doing it for the money. I just love what I do.”

Under von Furstenberg’s leadership, and together with Kolb and Smilor, domestic educational funding has expanded greatly in the past five years.

“The CFDA is devoted to supporting and nurturing new and emerging design talent. The CFDA’s educational initiatives were established to assist aspiring fashion designers in their high school, collegiate, and post-graduate studies, and the early stages of their careers. The goal of the CFDA’s educational initiatives is to ease the transition form student to professional designer.”

Since the 1960s, the CFDA has organized educational programs. However, it did not formally establish an annual, ongoing scholarship program until 1986. Its first, named in honor of the late designer Perry Ellis, was set up to benefit fashion students at the Parson’s School of Design.

It would be another decade before the CFDA would create its second scholarship, a merit-based grant for full-time students in a four-year program in their junior year. Since its inception, the highly competitive CFDA Scholarship Program has awarded over 135 scholarships totaling over $500,000, to attendees of the nation’s top design colleges and universities. Its endowment was enhanced in 2005 with a personal commitment from designer and CFDA member, Joseph Abboud.

While it took decades to establish it first funding programs for students, the CFDA has created several more in less than five years. In 2007 alone, it launched: the Clara Hancox Scholarship fund for menswear design (Hancox was a menswear reporter for the Daily News Record, or DNR, from 1944 to 1993); the Geoffrey Beene Design Scholarship Award for the most exemplary and innovative womanswear student (Beene’s foundation donated $5,000,000 for this special award and to support the CFDA Scholarship Program in general); and the CFDA/Teen Vogue Scholarship for promising high school students. In 2009, the Liz Claiborne Fashion Scholarship Award was endowed by Art Ortenberg, the late designer’s husband and business partner.

In 2010, the CFDA continued to extend its philanthropic arm. This time, funds went abroad after it organized the industry to raise one million dollars for the Clinton/Bush Haiti Fund through the sale of “Fashion for Haiti” shirts. One year later, in 2011, the CFDA raised $750,000 for the Japan Society to assist earthquake and tsunami relief efforts.

Von Furstenberg and Kolb, as well as Stan Herman, have also been advocates for the professional needs of the membership. One example is their advocacy of keeping apparel production in New York. Members have participated in rallies, such as “Save the Garment Center” in October of 2009. The CFDA has also partnered with other not-for-profit organizations, such as the Design Trust for Public Space. Together, their Made in Midtown collaboration is sponsoring interviews with stakeholders, including the unions and factory owners, and feasibility studies of critical fashion production. Support for the study came from sources such as the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation and the CFDA. Along with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Economic Development Corporation and Newmark Holding, the CFDA Fashion Incubator was launched; its goal is to support designers with subsidized studio space and to encourage mentoring in the heart of the Garment Center.

Another important CFDA initiative was to “restore consumer confidence and boost the industry’s economy in the midst of the recession.” In September of 2009, “Fashion’s Night Out” (FNO) debuted. More than 800 stores across the city’s five boroughs stayed open late (until 11:00 pm) and hosted special events hosted by fashion celebrities.  CFDA partners Vogue magazine, NYC & Company, and the City of New York, did much to publicize the event. It was deemed a huge success. In addition to revenue raised for businesses, proceeds from the special FNO T-shirt benefited the September 11 Memorial and Museum and the New York City Aids Fund. FNO continues to be an annual event.

The CFDA also performs more traditional trade association work with similar organizations in Paris and Milan, to promote design protection internationally. Under von Furstenberg and Kolb, the CFDA is the first American organization to spearhead efforts in Washington to pass the Design Piracy Prohibition Act. This problem is not new (Parisian couturiers struggled with piracy in the early 20th century), but the CFDA’s efforts to protect a fashion designer’s work from being copied without permission is groundbreaking.

Over the past decade, the CFDA has recognized the growing popularity of fashion. To reach an expanding audience and to document both the history of American fashion and the lifestyle of its membership, the CFDA produced a series of books with the publishing house of Assouline. Titles include:  American Fashion, American Fashion Accessories, American Fashion Menswear, American Fashion Cookbook, American Fashion: Designers at Home, American Fashion Travel: Designers on the Go, and Geoffrey Beene: An American Fashion Rebel.

The most recent undertaking by the CFDA is the book and exhibition that celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. Entitled Impact, the project was von Furstenberg’s brainchild. Not only did she provide the scope of both the book and exhibition, she also gave the projects their title. The organizers clearly understood that while the book could present the work of many of the hundreds of CFDA members, past and present, it certainly could not put on view an equal number of garments in an exhibition. Far fewer objects, less than 100 in total, were the maximum that could fit in the galleries at the Museum at FIT. With these constraints in mind, von Furstenberg devised what seemed to be the best way to present work by the Council’s members, a way that would not be based only on quality, financial success, historical significance, or name recognition. Her solution was an exhibition that would highlight CFDA members who have had the most “impact” on fashion. In a meeting in August 2010 with the CFDA and Museum at FIT organizers, von Furstenberg’s concept and title enthusiastically embraced and the efforts to make them a reality began.

Impact is a fitting tribute to the hundreds of members and thousands of constituents who have worked so diligently to create the CFDA, expand it, and make it the embodiment of self-advancement and altruism it has become in the past fifty years. While the history of the CFDA is complex, detailed, and rich—and rightfully deserves to be documented—this essay is but one humble effort to illuminate the council’s many achievements. The essay, the book, and the exhibition, are dedicated to the countless individuals who shared those achievements with all of us.

Patricia Mears is a fashion historian, curator, and Deputy Director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology