1. Emily Wilkens was an American fashion designer specializing in children's wear.
13 Facts About Emily Wilkens
1. 2.
Emily Wilkens won both the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award and the Coty Award for her work, which was considered groundbreaking for properly taking note of the requirements of teenage dressing, and not simply offering miniature grown-up garments.
3.
Emily Wilkens was an author, writing a number of books on self care and style, and during the late 1960s and early 1970s, became a beauty journalist, writing an advice column.
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Emily Wilkens put her studies of fashion illustration to use as a sketcher for newspaper advertisements.
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Unlike other designers working in the field, Emily Wilkens designed clothes particularly for young girls and teenagers, rather than making miniature versions of their mothers' garments.
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The fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert credited her with recognizing an untapped market, and the fashion historian Richard Martin stated that Emily Wilkens "invented the American teenager" long before rock and roll and James Dean consolidated the concept.
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Coty Award publicity at the time praised Emily Wilkens for producing clothing that gave young girls what they wished for, whilst pleasing their mothers.
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In 1948 Emily Wilkens published her first book, Here's Looking at You: The Modern Slant on Smartness for the Junior Miss.
9.
Emily Wilkens went on to write four other titles along similar themes of personal style, beauty tips, and grooming.
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Between 1966 and 1976 Emily Wilkens was a trustee of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
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Emily Wilkens died at the age of 83 in a retirement home in Riverdale, Bronx on December 2,2000.
12.
Emily Wilkens had been diagnosed with dementia nine years earlier, and moved there in 1991.
13.
Emily Wilkens was survived by her daughter and son, and five grandchildren.