Stephen Burrows was born in 1943 in Newark, New Jersey. His grandmother and mother were both seamstresses; his great-grandfather had been a sample-cutter for Hattie Carnegie. He studied at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art and at the Fashion Institute of Technology, graduating in 1966.

The Hem

In 1970, while zig-zag-stitching a jersey hem at his own Stephen Burrows' World boutique in Manhattan's West Village, Burrows realised that the zig-zag stretched the fabric unevenly and left a ruffled edge. He stopped correcting it and released the resulting garment. The lettuce hem — a rolled, ruffled, fluted edge produced by overlock stitching on stretch jersey — has remained in continuous industrial production since. It is Burrows's single most-durable design innovation.

The Versailles

In November 1973 Burrows was one of five American designers — with Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Halston, and Anne Klein — selected to represent the United States at the fundraising fashion-off against five French couturiers (Saint Laurent, Dior, Givenchy, Ungaro, Pierre Cardin) at the Château de Versailles. The event, staged to raise funds for the restoration of the palace, is regarded as the moment American fashion was accepted as a peer to Paris couture. Burrows, at thirty, was the youngest American designer on the runway — and the only Black American designer on either side.

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I wanted American women to move in my clothes. If you can't dance in it, I haven't done my job. — Stephen Burrows

The Later Career

Burrows won five Coty American Fashion Critics' Awards between 1973 and 1977 — a record for a single designer. His 1970s colour-saturated jersey dresses remain the definitive American evening silhouette of the Studio 54 era. He re-opened his label at Henri Bendel in 1989, closed it in 1992, re-launched independently in 2002, and continues to produce small collections.

A 2013 Museum of the City of New York retrospective, Stephen Burrows: When Fashion Danced, reinstated his claim on the American-fashion canon, from which he had, through the 1990s and 2000s, partially receded.