Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Nanette produced her first couture look at the tender age of nine outfitting a neighbor in a floral bedspread, beaded choker and face paint. The girl posed in the family’s front yard behind a hand-lettered sign declaring “Lepore,” and thus began Nanette’s lifelong interest in fashion.

Sensing young Nanette’s entrepreneurial talent, her parents encouraged her creativity. After all, artistic innovation flourished naturally in a household headed by an abstract painter-father and a fabulously stylish mother of four. Road tripping on Route 66 with her bohemian parents each summer instilled in Nanette a free spirit and a taste for travel.

After completing her undergraduate studies at Youngstown University, she packed her bags and headed east to New York City’s venerable Fashion Institute of Technology. She aced her degree in design, married painter Robert Savage and set out to pay her dues in design studios around town.

However, Nanette knew she wouldn’t be satisfied until her creations bore her own name. In 1992, bolstered by a $5,000 loan from her dad to strike out on her own, Nanette set up shop in a penthouse office in the garment district. It quickly became an incubator for poets and painters who would bounce ideas off one another while stargazing on the roof.

Today Nanette designs in her atelier in New York City alongside her husband, Robert, who helms the business side of the worldwide brand as its President. Nanette enjoys a strong following among editors, chic style-makers and celebrities including Blake Lively, Eva Longoria Parker, Lindsay Price, Katherine Heigl, Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson and Freida Pinto.

The Nanette Lepore brand extends to two complete fragrance lines, “Nanette Lepore” and “Shanghai Butterfly.” In Fall 2006, Nanette’s first comprehensive shoe collection launched internationally.

There are currently ten Nanette Lepore boutiques worldwide, in New York, London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Las Vegas, Chicago, Chevy Chase, Boston, and our most recent opening Bal Harbour. Our Madison Avenue boutique will be opening this Spring. Nanette resides in Manhattan’s West Village with her husband and daughter, Violet, age eleven.

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