American fashion designers

Joseph Abboud:
Joseph Abboud (born circa 1950 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an award-winning American menswear fashion designer and author.

[edit] Family
The Abboud family was a working-class Christian Lebanese family that started out in the South End of Boston and later moved to the Roslindale section of Boston. Abboud's mother, Lila, was a seamstress. On a trip to Australia, Abboud discovered that his great-grandfather had owned Australia's largest men's tailored-clothing company. He now has two daughters, Lila and Ari, and resides in Bedford, NY with his family on a private farm.


[edit] Education
Abboud graduated from the University of Massachusetts-Boston in 1972, then studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.[1] He started working full time at the upscale department store Louis Boston. He turned down a teaching position at the Brookline High School.

Career
Abboud first started working in the fashion industry as a 16-year-old teenager working part-time at Louis Boston. Abboud stated: "Louis Boston was a huge part of my career. I really landed in a world of very glamorous style, beautiful clothes, just the world of what international fashion was about. If this had never happened, then the rest of it wouldn't have happened."

Abboud joined Ralph Lauren in 1981, eventually becoming associate director of menswear design. He launched his own label in 1986. [2]

In 1991 Abboud worked with fashion director Peter Speliopoulos. Abboud was the first designer to win the CFDA award as Best Menswear Designer two years in a row.

Many of Abboud's famous friends are also his customers, including American trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, author and former TV news anchor Tom Brokaw, and former Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra [1].

While JA Apparel still has rights to his name, Abboud is running his own line, called Jaz.

BOOK:
Abboud wrote Threads: My Life Behind the Seams in the High Stakes World of Fashion [2]. He thoroughly describes the fashion industry from designing and selling clothes to naming colors.

He also writes about some of the negative experiences that he has endured such as racial profiling after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, a court battle over legal rights to his name, and a failed flagship store that is now occupied by Donna Karan.