Babette Pinsky is an American

clothing designer Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by culture and different trends, and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates ...

known for creating Babette, a defunct line of upscale women's clothing produced and designed by Pinsky in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

and sold across the United States in department stores, boutique shops and an eponymous chain of Babette stores. Pinsky owned and managed the business in partnership with her husband, Steven Pinsky. They closed the business in 2016.

Early life and education

Pinsky was born and raised in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. Her French mother gave her the French name, Babette. She graduated from the

Fashion Institute of Technology The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is a public college in New York City. It is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) and focuses on art, business, design, mass communication, and technology connected to the fashion industry. ...

. She moved to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

in 1968 with her first husband.

Career

Pinsky founded Babette in 1968. Her husband, Steven, joined the company in 1990. In the early years, her pleated fabrics were created by a pleating factory in San Francisco. The Pinskys bought the factory in 1995. The company later moved to a larger factory in

, where Pinsky designed and produced clothing in a 25,000- square-foot second-floor manufacturing facility on West Grand Avenue in West Oakland, employing 10 seamstresses and a number of other workers, including master pleater Leung Tang, an immigrant from Hong Kong. The line was carried in hundreds of department stores and boutiques, and in Babette shops in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, San Jose,

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

and other cities. By 2014, there were nine Babette stores. Pinsky's signature style featured what was then a "unique accordion-like pleating style" heat-pressed into microfiber fabrics. As the company grew, Pinsky employed co-designer Josephine Tchang. A single piece can have 3 different kinds of pleating. ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The ...

'' fashion editor Sylvia Rubin credits Pinsky together with

Issey Miyake was a Japanese fashion designer. He was known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances, such as '' L'eau d'Issey'', which became his best-known product. Life and career Miyake was born on 22 April 1938 in Hiroshi ...

with "reinventing" the Fortuny pleat in the 1980s. Rubin describes Pinsky as using "Fortuny pleats, knife pleats, cube pleats, flower pleats, chevron pleats, box pleats - or a combination of any or more of the above," in her designs. Pinsky is noted for designing, in the 1980s, an intricately pleated, architectural, trapezoidal-shaped raincoat with a metallic sheen. In 2008 the

Weisman Art Museum The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum is an art museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1934 as University Gallery, the museum was originally housed in an upper floor of the university's Northrop Auditorium. In 19 ...

held a special exhibit on Pinsky's designs.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pinsky, Babette 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American businesswomen 21st-century American businesspeople American company founders American women company founders American fashion businesspeople Living people American women fashion designers American fashion designers American women business executives American business executives Businesspeople from New York City Fashion Institute of Technology alumni 1968 establishments in the United States Clothing retailers of the United States Privately held companies based in New York (state) Retail companies established in 1968 Companies based in Oakland, California Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American businesswomen