Yearly Archives: 2021

…………..There are all different types of necklaces…..and then there are LOCKETS……A locket is so much more than just a necklace. It has sentimental value. It has a compartment to place a keepsake…..a picture of someone you love or even a lock of hair…..maybe a lock of a baby’s hair……Coming at the end of the week…..so I have been told…….”THE LOCKET”………….I designed this locket quite a while ago, and I’m happy to finally be able to bring it to you…..It is part of my new Sterling Silver and Sterling Silver and Gold plate, made in Italy collection…..Jac and I loved to sit out on summer evenings, and look at the moon and stars. It was always a wonder to us that every person that every existed on this planet, from the cave men and women on, all looked at the same moon we were looking at now…….Jesus and the Apostles, Mary Magdalene, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo, Elizabeth the first and Katherine the Great, Napoleon, Columbus and Magellan…every Chinese Emperor….Native Americans, and ever man woman and child, from every continent that came before us…..all looked at the same moon. For thousands of years to come [hopefully], long after we are all gone, the people living then will be looking at the same moon. Will they be wondering about us?………Jac loved the constellations and could point them out to me. I’ve tried, but I can’t find anything but the little dipper anymore…..On one summery clear night at the beach on Fire Island, when the stars were very bright, I showed Jac the Milky Way. She loved it!!!!……We would always say to each other…….”I love you over the moon, and beyond the stars”….We would give each other cards that had the same or similar sayings……….On one trip I made without her, I came home to find a paper on my pillow that read, “I love you over the moon and beyond the stars”. I kept it…..After Jac passed I framed it, and it hangs over my night table. It is the last thing I see before I go to sleep, and the first thing I see in the morning…………The locket with the stars and moon is inscribed with this saying. The locket opens. It has a red lining, and you can put pictures inside of the people you love…..The locket will be available in Sterling Silver with the Cubic Zirconia stones and Sterling Silver with Gold plate, again with the Cubic Zirconia stones…..Each locket will be inscribed………”I love you over the moon and beyond the stars”……………a wonderful present for someone you love beyond the moon……………..Happy Holidays…………………..Love………………….Louis

…………………..COMING AT THE END OF THE WEEK!!!!! I have been told that this new Sterling Silver and Gold Plate necklace will be posted on QVC by the end of the week…..Keep your fingers crossed!!!!………..The “ALL YOU HAVE TO BE IS WONDERFUL” necklace was the last piece I designed with this inscription, but it was never produced…..until NOW!……..Many of you who know these pieces, the ring, the bracelet and the coordinating earring [no inscription on the earring], also know the meaning behind the saying. If you don’t I will retell the story…..Jac loved Marilyn Munroe. She was fascinated by her story, her life, her loves, her intellect, and her crippling insecurities…….She read many books and articles about her. One thing that captured Jac was when Marilyn was preparing to go out onto a movie set. She would sit in her dressing room in front of the mirror, sometimes for hours. She would put on her makeup and transform herself into “Marilyn”, and say to herself in the mirror…..”all you have to be is wonderful”. She would say this over and over until she got the courage to open the door and go out to the many people waiting for her……I think as a 17 year old girl Jac suffered early on with some of the same insecurities. It isn’t easy for a young inexperienced girl to be thrown into a room with a bunch of competitive barracudas…It could be a snake pit……Once you made your group of friends that all changed, but it could be a nasty business….I think Marilyn’s story hit home to her……..When ever I was ready to go on set at QVC, I would be standing in the wings with Jac. She would take my hands, look me in the eyes and say “all you have be be is wonderful!”. If I had any nervousness or jitters they disappeared. I would go out on set with these words in my ears, and all was good……I canb’t tell you how many times I have said to myself “all you have to be is wonderful”……This new necklace completes the “AYHTBIW” series. I also call it the “SMILE” necklace for short. It’s a crescent shape that hangs from two chains. The length is adjustable……….The piece is once again in Sterling Silver or Sterling Silver with Gold plate, made in Italy. It can be worn where the inscription is showing, or reversed to keep it secret and private. It has a slightly twisted shape like the other pieces……..This is a very discreet necklace and can be worn by anyone, any age, any time of day. It can be very casual on a Tee, or it can add just the right dressy touch to a simple outfit……..This would make a fabulous present for someone that you want to know just how WONDERFUL THEY ARE!………………….Happy Holidays!…………………much Love………………Louis

……………..In the 80s “TAXI” was a very hip, edgy magazine, so you can imagine how excited I was when they chose me to do an article on…….Donna had just left to do her own thing, and now I was completely at the helm of Anne Klein….it was enormous pressure. I’m sitting at my huge, square, white desk sketching away for the camera…….I had many pin up boards…..Some were for the current collection I was working on, and some were just random photos of friends or whatever caught my eye that interested me. The gentleman with his hands on his hips was Andrea Pfister one of my best friends and collaborators. He was a fabulous and brilliant shoe designer, and sold his fantastical shoes all over the world. He was based out of Italy, and had the most splendid villa in Praiano, which is the next village down from Positiano…..literally 10 to 15 minutes away. I have posted many pictures in the past of his villa where I often stayed. I was lucky enough to work with him there twice a year for two weeks developing the Couture Anne Klein Collection of shoes. He had a fabulous pool over looking the Mediterranean with a view of Capri off in the distance. It was Paradise. Jac would come during my summer trip to Andrea’s and we would have a mini vacation, often taking off afterwards to some other sunny beautiful place…….Andrea passed away four months after Jac, and his ashes were spread from his terrace into the sea. If you would like to see his villa it has been bought and turned into a luxury rental villa. Just google “Villa Lily, Praiano Italy”. Why they gave it that name I have no idea. Andrea had named the villa after an ancient tower that was on the property at the edge of the pool. He converted the tower into a marvelous bedroom on the second floor with a bathroom below….It was much more appropriate than “Villa Lily”….He was also my best man at Jac and my marriage…….I miss him very much……..There is also a picture of me and Linda Evans, and a picture of me and Patti Labelle sitting in first class on our way back to NYC from Paris. She was introduced to me by a mutual friend, Shelly, who was traveling with her. Shelly was a buyer from a very cool boutique in Philly. I used to love to sit with her in the showroom when she was buying the collection, because she was mainly interested in the cream of the collection…..Basics, thought she bought some. were just fillers…..Shelly wanted FASHION!!!……There is also a candid picture of Jac at the lower right. She was on the streets of NY going from apt to apt when Bill Cunningham spotted her, took the picture, and published it in the Fashion of the Time Sunday section. It was a surprise…..Bill was very sly! This was my first big spread in a fashion magazine……..the first of many to come over the next ten years I was on my own.

……………….The Taxi spread was FIVE pages. The photos they used were of my most current Resort collection that was being sold in the showroom, and the next fall collection I was still working on. I chose Dalma, a wonderful Brazilian model, to do the shoot. She was very exotic and worked for EVERYONE on both sides of the Atlantic. She was one of the most popular runway models at the time, and retired at the height of her career. Everyone was shocked and pleaded with her to reconsider. However, she realized there was a new crop of younger models coming up, and would rather quit at the top than all of a sudden find herself getting the less important looks from designer’s collections. She was smart….something most models would never consider. She moved to Italy, worked for Valentino behind the scenes. married and is raising a family. She still looks incredible! The picture at the bottom is of Mark, one of my assistants, who was a brilliant illustrator, and Orfeo Dugo, my assistant pattern maker. He was in charge of one of my sample rooms that made 90% of my woven jackets…..He was brilliant….He also made ALL of my personal suits. I loved him dearly. He passed away while working for me from colon cancer. He was miss diagnosed. His doctor said he had stomach ulcers. I convinced him to get a second opinion, because he was always in pain. That’s when they found out. He died four months later. He was only in his early 50s. I think of Orfeo often……..The swatch board to the extreme right was my current Fall board. Pinned to it were fabrics I was working on [all black and ivory] and a red crocodile belt hanging on top. The sketches were quick croquis I had done of styles that were in work in the sample rooms. This is one of the few magazine articles I was able to get. Most of them stayed in the Anne Klein library after I left………never to be seen again.

…………I used to draw as early as I can remember. It was my most favorite thing to do….probably as soon as I could hold a pencil or a crayon….I used to lay on the kitchen floor and sketch while my mother was doing her work….walking around me. I sketched all the time in kindergarten, and I was told I hoarded the crayons….yep, it sounds like me! I can remember how disappointed I was when I went on to 1st and 2nd grade, because there was less and less time to draw, and more and more time on subjects I cared less about. I wasn’t a great student in arithmetic, spelling and reading which were the subjects that were focused on the most. I wasn’t good at memorizing….I remember we would sit on the floor in a circle with reading books in hand, and we had to take turns reading aloud. It was torture for me. I hated reading, and really didn’t read many books on my own until I was much older. Little did anyone know that I had a degree of dyslexia, and these subjects were very difficult for me. To this day I always have to check myself with numbers…writing a check or writing a date, and as many of you know giving a style number! Drawing was my sanctuary. I had excelled in other subjects, but some were so difficult no matter how much I studied I just couldn’t get a handle on them……I always had to go to summer school for math, but the teachers were much more focused and patient with us as individuals, and I did much better….not great but well enough to move on….I had the biggest collection of coloring books and crayons. I also had to have the biggest set of crayons that came out……the box of 64 colors was the best thing that ever happened! Absolutely no one was allowed to use my crayons or color in my books. If my mother let one of my cousins use them I would have a fit! She soon learned that sharing them was not something I wanted to do. They could play with any of my toys, but not my crayons or coloring books……I used to spend hours at my desk drawing and coloring. I started adding fashion sketches very early on. The ones above were probably when I was 9 or 10. I know the ones to the extreme right and the gown with the lace top and swatch were early. My style of sketching became more sophisticated as I got older. I started looking at the illustrations in catalogs my mother got, and tried to copy the style until it came naturally to me. The styles however were my ideas……Recently I came across a very old black portfolio that I thought was my final portfolio from Parsons. That was the portfolio all of the senior students worked on for our job interviews, but when I opened it….it wasn’t the portfolio. Instead it had many of these old sketches I had done so many years ago. I was happy to find them. I hadn’t seen them for years and years. It also had finished sketches from Parsons, but none of them were from my final portfolio. It’s got to be somewhere????? I will just have to keep searching…….I remember a long time ago showing these early sketches to Jac. The two of us laughed and laughed at the descriptions I wrote on the earliest ones [only the one to the bottom right has a description]. They were very corny, and I stopped doing it!!! I signed my name “lou”!!!!!on the early ones, and wisely dropped that as I got older too…It was pretty pretentious for a kid………Looking at these brought back lots of memories…….Early on I made up my mind that this is what I was going to do. I always got support, and when my Uncle Paul, who was in the fashion business, told my parents he though I was very talented, that sealed the deal. I remember in junior high school when i was 13 I started to see Broadway shows with my best friend Bobby, and for a while I wanted to design sets and costumes. I did lots of sketches of stage sets and the costumes the players would wear……. Bobby was going to write the shows and I was going to design them! Eventually Bobby decided to do something else with his life, and became a psychologist! I guess it isn’t such a giant leap being a playwright and a psychologist! I even thought for a short while of becoming an architect, but I soon found out there was a LOT OF MATH involved….not for me! I came back to my first love…. fashion……very little math needed! My high school friends were envious of me [in a good way], that I knew exactly what I wanted my life’s work to be, while they were going off to college without a clue and struggling as to what they wanted to do with their lives. We would get together at each others houses and discuss our life’s paths. I was always determined, and very focused……I never had any doubts, and put all of my energies into being successful…….Off I went to Parsons School Of Design, a very naive young boy, but knowing somehow my life would change forever.