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¶ Indiana-born Bill Blass, 54, started his own firm nine years ago with a successful menswear collection. "Women," he recalls, "kept saying to me, 'I wish you'd do things like that for us.' " So he did. His high-fashion clothes, which were launched in 1967 and sell for up to $2,000, and his less expensive Blass-port line ($25 to $350), started two years later, show the same jaunty lines that made his suits a hit with affluent suburban males—sometimes known as his "Scarsdale Mafia." A supersalesman who, as one editor notes, "could sell the eyelashes off a hog," Blass sells in Tokyo and Hong Kong and has one of the biggest accessory businesses of any American designer. His 1975 retail sales were $24 million. His fans include Anne Douglas, Nancy Kissinger and Socialites Anne Ford Uzielli, Charlotte Ford Forstmann, Chessy Rayner and Mrs. Joshua Logan.
¶ Oscar de la Renta, 41, was born in Santo Domingo and studied art in Madrid. But his clothes are essentially and seductively Yanqui. Says he: "We Americans understand the concept and the role of the modern woman far better than anyone else. We have a far greater accumulation of know-how than our European counterparts." He is particularly proud of his overseas popularity; he had retail sales of $2.5 million last year in Japan, Mexico and Canada. "Good fashion is good anywhere in the world," he believes. "I'm gratified that Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller and Mrs. Kissinger are among buyers of my clothes. But I'd like to see every Japanese woman follow suit."
¶ Mary McFadden, 38, is the most exotic of American designers. Long Island-bred, educated at Columbia and the Sorbonne, she started making clothes in Africa before hanging out her shingle as a designer in 1973. Working in Eastern silks, Javanese hand-painted batiks, Japanese pongee and Indian tussah, she draws inspiration for prints from modern paintings (Kenneth Noland, Sam Francis), African calligraphy, ancient Persian costumes and Ming porcelains. "Each fabric," she insists, "should be as good as any painting in the Metropolitan." McFadden emphasizes soft, flowing dresses. Says she: "I want my woman to float. The cut of my silks has a marvelous movement on the body." For contrast, she also takes the "tubular" approach, using a woman's shoulders as an architectural form from which to hang a dress or tunic. Her own best model, McFadden (5 ft. 4 in., 95 lbs.) boasts, "I cut all my clothes on myself." In just three years, McFadden has staked out her own expensive (to $1,000) corner of the market, appealing to such clients as Diana Vreeland (who says that her other clothes are all European), and Socialites Mrs. William ("Babe") Paley, Mrs. Pierre Schlumberger, Mrs. Jane Engelhard and Mrs. Rupert Hambro.
¶ Diane von Furstenberg, 29, is a spectacularly successful entrepreneur whose American-accented, Italian-made clothes are marketed around the world. Belgian-born, she started out selling clothes in the U.S. that were made by Italy's Angelo Ferretti, which still manufactures her entire line, and by year's end expects to turn out 20,000 garments a week for the U.S. market alone. Her clothes and accessories will gross $60 million in 1976.