Oscar de la Renta (born July 22, 1932 in the Dominican Republic),as a fashion designer who is son of a Puerto Rican father and a Dominican mother. His original surname is commonly rumored to have been Renta, though there does not appear to be any evidence to support this. At the age of 18, he moved to Madrid, Spain, where he studied painting at the Academy Of San Fernando. He began to show an interest in fashion, however, and soon found work as a sketcher with some of Spain's top fashion houses. A little later, he took a designing class with one of Europe's top couturiers, Cristobal Balenciaga. He later moved to Paris, where he joined Antonio Castillo as a couture assistant.

In 1963, de la Renta relocated to New York, where he became a protegé of Baron de Gunzburg and worked for Elizabeth Arden. This experience and the contacts would later give him the foundation needed to launch his own clothing lines and perfumes.

In 1965, he left Elizabeth Arden and went to work for Jane Derby Ltd., an American fashion company in business since the 1930s. The labels of the clothes read "Oscar de la Renta for Jane Derby." After Derby's death in 1969, de la Renta took over the company and renamed it Oscar de la Renta.

Apart from the signature Oscar de la Renta products, he has launched the Pink Label products and has ventured into the world of women's accessories, men's clothing, sportswear and perfumes. He also produces, with an American manufacturer Century Furniture, a collection of home furnishings based on antiques and other items that furnish his houses in Connecticut, New York City, and the Dominican Republic.

In 1967, he became the third husband of Françoise de Langlade (1931-1983), an editor in chief of French Vogue. Born in Bordeaux and raised between Paris and the island of Martinique, she worked for the fashion house of Elsa Schiaparelli and the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar before joining French Vogue. After her marriage to de la Renta, she worked as a consultant to Elizabeth Arden, had their Manhattan apartment decorated by Denning & Fourcade and later opened her own decorating business; her clients included fashion executive Marina Schiano and actors Helmut Berger and Florinda Bolkan. Once a mistress of Baron Elie de Rothschild, she was previously married to and divorced from French businessman Jean Bruère, by whom she had one son, Jean Marc Bruère, and diplomat Nicholas Bagenow. She died of cancer.

In 1989, the designer married the former Anne France Engelhard (1940-), the former wife of New York banker Samuel Pryor Reed and the adopted stepdaughter of American minerals industrialist Charles W. Engelhard Jr.. She is the only child of Jane Pinto Reis (1917-2004, aka Marie Annette Reiss/Marie Antoinette Reiss), a Chinese-born philanthropist of Brazilian, German, and Irish-American ancestry, and her first husband, Dr. Fritz Mannheimer (1890-1939), a German-born Dutch banker and art collector known as the King of Flying Capital. Her maternal grandfather was Hugo Reiss, a Brazilian diplomat who reportedly served as minister to China.

De la Renta has stepchildren from both marriages; he also has an adopted son, Moises de la Renta.

According to Puerto Rican newspaper, El Vocero, former United States President Bill Clinton stayed in De La Renta's Punta Cana home during January of 2006, holding a meeting with Dominican Republic Leonel Fernandez in De La Renta's house at the beach resort.
 

The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_de_la_Renta     2/6/06