Hanae Mori

Who is Hanae Mori?

Hanae Mori is a fashion designer in Japan. She is the only Japanese woman to have presented her collections on the runways of Paris and New York, and the first Asian woman to be admitted as an official haute couture design house by the fédération française de la couture in France. She is also the most honored female designer in Japan. Being one of the first women to have a career in fashion in Japan, she is widely regarded as an icon of liberated women. Her fashion house, opened in Japan in 1951, grew to become a $500 million international business by the 1990s.