Joan Calabrese

Calabrese died of uterine cancer on July 16, 2017 in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, aged 77.

Calabrese clients included Natalie Wood, members of the Kennedy family, Nancy Sinatra and Betsy Bloomingdale. Willow Smith wore her dress in the Fashion Catwalk at The Dubai Mall. When Dakota Fanning attended the 2003 Emmys, aged 9, she wore a Calabrese design on the red carpet. When Dakota Fanning wore her dress, Joan Rivers was the host and asked her who she was wearing and Dakota answered Joan Calabrese. This also got Joan more known in the fashion industry and kicked off her career even more.

Her early designs were very expensive, costing up to $400 in 1982, mainly due to her focus on the best fabrics from Europe. She described how she tried to individualize her materials and make her pieces unique and special. In an interview with Drexel University, Joan said many of her customers considered the gowns a family heirloom to be passed from generation to generation.

Joan Frances Calabrese (October 29, 1939 – July 16, 2017) was an American fashion designer specialising in children's high end clothing.

Joan Calabrese, born on October 29, 1939, was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Joan displayed a love for fashion from a very early age when she began designing and sewing clothes for her dolls. Calabrese once noted, "my mother said as soon as I could hold a pencil I was drawing costumes and people." She studied fashion illustration at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and was offered a full scholarship which she declined in order to work with family. She began styling children's clothing when she first made dresses for her two daughters, Marisa Moore and Elena Calabrese. As she made these dresses, her cousin, Tom Marotta, who was at that time Vice President of Saks Fifth Avenue's couture department, was intrigued by her designs and had Joan introduce her dresses to the store. This Children's Boutique owned by Linda Berman started to buy her self-sewn dresses, which started off her career. For the first couple of years of sewing dresses, she only worked on them herself, but as her children's dresses got introduced into her boutiques she began to hire seamstress. As she began to become more known, her dresses were now in Cerutti's on Madison Avenue, New York. After this well-known store bought her clothing, more and more companies wanted her dresses, which led to her name getting out there. She was one of the few stylist for high style clothing for children. Calabrese also made women's handbags, but was more inspired to do children's clothing and continued on with couture for kids.