Michaele Vollbracht
American
1947-2018
Michaele Vollbracht (1947 –2018) began his career in fashion as a student at The Parsons School of Design in 1965. Four years later, Geoffrey Beene hired him as a member of his design team, taking Issey Miyake's assistant position. In 1973, he went to work for Henri Bendel as their in-house illustrator. He continued in that function when he moved to Bloomingdale's after another two years, eventually designing the store's famous Face Bag, carried out daily by thousands of shoppers.
Around that time, in 1978-79, he introduced the Michaele Vollbracht Collection. The line was a smash hit, landing in Bergdorf Goodman and eventually other high-end stores, including Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, and was received so well that it earned him the Coty Award the very next year. In 1989, The New Yorker named him as one of its top illustrators, and he would produce covers and other art for the next several years. In 1999, Vollbracht returned to the world of fashion after Bill Blass, a longtime friend and mentor, asked him to design a retrospective on Blass' work for Indiana University's art museum.
