Michael Vollbracht

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Vollbracht

Born	1947 Quincy, Illinois
Nationality	American
Education	Parsons The New School for Design, 1969
Labels	Bill Blass Limited
Awards	Coty Award, 1980

Michael Vollbracht, born 1947 in Quincy, Illinois, is head designer of Bill Blass Limited. He has had previous success in that field, although he is primarily an illustrator.

He began his career in fashion as a student at what was then Parsons School of Design in 1965. Four years later, Geoffrey Beene hired him as a member of his design team, and Donald Brooks followed suit two years later. 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, but also designed the store's famous Big Brown Bag, carried out daily by thousands of shoppers.

In 1979 he launched his own line, which was received so well that it earned him the Coty Award the very next year. He capped this success by leaving fashion entirely in 1985 after the publication of Nothing Sacred, a visual diary of his years in New York City and the many people he interacted with. He moved to Florida and concentrated on his illustrations and art. In 1989, The New Yorker named him one of its top illustrators, and he would produce covers and other art for the next several years.

He returned to fashion with Bill Blass, a longtime friend and mentor, in 1999, after curating a retrospective on Blass's career and work for Indiana University's art museum which opened in 2002 after Blass's death. The following year he returned to New York when the house hired him on.