In 1939, at the age of 17, William Blass moved to New York City from Fort Wayne, Indiana to attend Parsons School of Design and received nearly a dozen awards and honors, as well as a star on New York City’s Fashion Walk of Fame, before his death in 2002. His mother was a dressmaker and after his father’s suicide when William was only five years old he turned to sketching and sewing as a creative outlet. At the age of only fifteen he began designing evening gowns which he sold to a New York manufacturer for $25 a piece. After being the first man to win Mademoiselle’s Design for Living Award and completing his studies at Parsons Blass enlisted in the U.S. army and was assigned to the 603rd Camouflage Battalion with a group of writers, artists, sound engineers, theatre techs and other creative professionals. Their mission was to fool the German army into believing the Allied troops were positioned in fake locations by using recordings, dummy tanks and other false materials. After the war ended, Blass moved back to New York and became a protege of Russian emigre and Vogue editor Baron Nicki de Gunzburg – along with Oscar de la Renta and Calvin Klein.

Blass set his line apart by designing clothing which any woman could wear day or night and he often expressed the belief that “no woman can be well dressed unless she is comfortable in what she is wearing.” Known as the “Dean of American Designers” throughout the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s Blass made sophisticated, feminine clothes that were found at country clubs and black tie events and favored by First Ladies like Jackie Onassis, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush as well as socialites like Brooke Astor, Gloria Vanderbilt and Nan Kempner. Blass said he designed for the woman “not obsessed with fashion,” who cares about clothes, but has a career, a family and other interests. Blass began writing his autobiography after retiring in 1999 and completed the book just a few weeks before his death in 2002. Since 2007 the womenswear collection has been headed by Peter Som with Michael Bastian designing the brand’s line of menswear.