Women's Fashion Brands O

Welcome to the O section of the Women's Fashion Brands directory. In this area of the fashion brand directory you will find women's fashion brands from leading apparel companies and fashion designers that begin with the letter O: 8 brand profiles in all, gathered in the grid below in the original directory's listing order, from Oakley to Outer Banks. O is the directory's outdoors-and-occasions letter - two surf originals, a wetsuit inventor, a performance eyewear house and a 1856 sporting retailer on one side; two couturiers who dressed Jacqueline Kennedy, a First Lady's designer and a Miami intimate apparel label on the other; and one discontinued sportswear label kept honestly as history at the end.

If you know of an important women's fashion brand that begins with the letter O and is not listed in this section, please let us know, as the original O hub invited readers to do. And if you prefer to search by clothing category rather than by a specific clothing brand, the Clothes Guide linked from this page organises the same wardrobe by garment instead of by name. Every profile in this letter follows the brands rule for this directory: the facts are the originals' facts, preserved exactly as they were stated - founding dates, ownership changes, quoted notices and the founders' own records - with shopping guidance built around them and nothing invented in between. Two profiles keep the directory's honest forms: Oleg Cassini, whose original carried no official site, and Outer Banks, whose original carried only two dated 2012 notices - both preserved plainly, as written.

Eight Brands: Surf, Sport, Couture and One Historical Label

The letter opens with performance and surf: Oakley, the Lake Forest, California company and Luxottica subsidiary that designs sunglasses, goggles, apparel, backpacks, shoes and accessories in house and holds more than 600 patents for eyewear, materials and performance gear; Ocean Pacific, John Smith's 1960s Irvine surfboard label, turned into surf apparel by Jim Jenks in 1972 with its instantly recognizable OP logo, acquired by Warnaco in 2003, sold to Iconix Brand Group in 2006 and licensed exclusively to Walmart in August 2007; and Oleg Cassini, the Rome-started, Paramount-trained designer whose clean-lined, luxurious designs for Jacqueline Kennedy created the Jackie look copied by women all over the world, launched at Lord & Taylor under Dorothy Shaver's Fifth Avenue windows.

The middle of the letter pairs the two remaining surf and intimate specialists with the letter's elder: O'Neill, started in 1952 in California by Jack O'Neill, credited with inventing the wetsuit - his son Pat the surfboard leash - moved from San Francisco to Santa Cruz by the decade's end and dominating the world's wetsuit market by 1980; OnGossamer, the intimate apparel label whose debut collection came in Miami, FL in 1987, built in seamless, lace and cotton construction families and now a Komar brand, treated here strictly on construction, fit and care; and Orvis, founded in Manchester, Vermont in 1856 by Charles F. Orvis to sell fishing tackle, the oldest mail-order retailer in the United States, family-owned, specializing in high-end fly fishing, hunting and sporting goods, and outfitting women for more than 150 years with clothing tested rigorously in real-life situations.

O closes with couture and history: Oscar de la Renta, the Santo Domingo-born designer trained by Cristóbal Balenciaga - his mentor - and Antonio del Castillo at Lanvin from 1961, internationally known in the 1960s as one of the couturiers who dressed Jacqueline Kennedy, who took over Jane Derby's label in August 1965 and built an eponymous house with boutiques from Harrods of London to Madison Avenue, New York; and Outer Banks, Hanesbrands' sportswear label, whose whole record in the original is the May 30, 2012 Chicago Tribune report of Hanesbrands' plan to sell it while exiting unbranded apparel, and the Alpha Shirt notice that as of August 15, 2012 the label would no longer be sold in its industry - preserved word for word in substance as this directory's historical profile.

How to Use These O Profiles

Read each profile for the record the original actually kept. Oakley, O'Neill and Orvis reward specification reading - patents and product lists, wetsuit garment types, materials and guarantees. Ocean Pacific, Oleg Cassini and Oscar de la Renta reward chronology reading - label sales and licenses, film-to-First-Lady careers, apprenticeships and house successions, each date preserved as stated. OnGossamer rewards product reading - choose the construction family first, then the measured size. Outer Banks rewards the opposite discipline: accept a two-notice record at its true size, and buy surviving sportswear on the garment in hand.

Where the original O pages pointed readers onward - to the brands' official sites carried in each profile's references for the six brands whose originals linked one, to Apparel Search's own Warnaco and Iconix Brand Group profiles from the Ocean Pacific page, the Komar profile and bra and underwear glossaries from the OnGossamer page, and the Oscar de la Renta designer profile and eponymous label definition from his page, and across the directory to popular brands, designers, retail and wholesale guides - those editorial links are carried in the rebuilt pages, woven into the copy or listed under More to Explore. Eight brands from a Santa Cruz wetsuit workshop to a Madison Avenue boutique: O is the women's brands directory at its widest range.