Oscar Aristides Renta Fiallo (22 July 1932 – 20 October 2014), more known as Oscar de la Renta, was a Dominican fashion designer. Hailing from Santo Domingo, he received training from Cristobal Balenciaga and later gained global recognition during the 1960s for dressing Jacqueline Kennedy.
As a child, being the youngest of seven children and the only boy in his family, Oscar de la Renta attended art school in Santo Domingo, and when he turned nineteen, he moved to Madrid to study painting at the Royal Academy of San Fernando.
In 1956, the daughter of the American ambassador to Spain ordered a dress for a debutante ball from an aspiring fashion designer. The dress was a great success and appeared on the cover of the known at that time “Life” magazine, as a result of which the designer received a fateful job invitation from the fashion house of “Balenciaga”. And three years later, invitations followed from Paris: from the brands of “Christian Dior” and “Lanvin”. De la Renta went to work at Lanvin as an assistant to Spanish designer Antonio del Castillo. At this job, he met all the high society of Paris, including Françoise de Langlade, who headed French Vogue. This is how the designer met his first wife.
In 1962, at a reception with Duke Lanfranco Rasponi in New York, Oscar de la Renta met the owner of the cosmetics empire, Elizabeth Arden, who had long wanted to launch a clothing line and offered him cooperation. In addition to this offer, the designer had many others, including an offer from the fashion house of “Christian Dior”. But Diana Vreeland, the legendary editor-in-chief of the American Vogue, advised him to work with Elizabeth Arden, who knew nothing about fashion, and not with Dior, where he would always remain a shadow of other designers. Following this wise advice, the designer and his wife moved to New York and accepted a job at Elizabeth Arden’s.
A couple of years later, he changed the job place in favor of the fashion house of Jane Derby, and when the owner passed away, he bought the brand and named the fashion house after himself. This is how the famous “Oscar de la Renta” brand appeared in 1967.
Three years after founding his fashion house, the designer launched a men’s clothing line, and three more years later he took the post of president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
In 1983, Oscar de la Renta’s wife passed away from cancer, and the fashion designer began investing large amounts of money into the research of this disease. A year later, he adopted a boy, Moses. And in 1989, he married for the second time – to his first wife’s best friend and socialite Annette Reed.
In 1992, Oscar de la Renta took up the position of the designer at “Balmain” and started working on ready-to-wear and haute couture collections. He became the first Dominican to head a French fashion house.
Oscar de la Renta was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and died in 2014 at the age of 82, at his home in Kent, Connecticut.
Over nearly 50 years of distinguished work in the world of fashion, the famous designer has received numerous honorary awards, including a lifetime award for contributions to American fashion from the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
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