Betty Yokova

Betty Yokova (1901 – 24 April 1995) was a Czech-born French fashion designer who became an award-winning American fur designer in New York.

Biography

Betty Yokova was born in Prague, Bohemia in 1901,[1] and studied art in Paris.[2] She began her fashion career in Paris in the 1930s, opening her own couture house despite not having had any training or apprenticeships with other fashion houses.[2] At the outbreak of World War II, Yokova closed her establishment.[2]

In 1948 Yokova moved to New York and joined Anna Potok as a designer for Potok and her brother's fur house, Maximilian.[2] She and Potok worked together on the designs, and were credited as co-designers.[3] Apart from a brief interlude in the early 1960s where she worked at Bernham Stein, she worked for Maximilian until 1963, when she left to design for another furrier, A. Neustadter & Sons.[2] In 1963, she was presented with a Coty Award for her fur designs at Neustadter.[4] In 1964, Yokova described her approach to design as seeing the pelts as fabrics, and being inspired by their textures and colors.[2]

She retired in 1967, and died on 24 April 1995, at the Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport. She was survived by her sister.[2]

References
  1. Rechcigl, Miloslav (2 November 2021). Notable Americans of Czechoslovak Ancestry in Arts and Letters and in Education. AuthorHouse. p. 267. ISBN 978-1-6655-4006-3.
  2. "Betty Yokova". WWD. 2 May 1995.
  3. "Waistlines Are Lowered, Armholes Dropped in New Fall Furs; Jackets Replace Stoles in Maximilian Styles". The New York Times. 5 October 1959. Retrieved 27 June 2022.
  4. McDowell, Colin (1984). McDowell's Directory of Twentieth Century Fashion. Frederick Muller. pp. 299–301. ISBN 0-584-11070-7.


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