"Witty, warm, colorful, and hearty," gushes the mother of fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi in the documentary "Unzipped," referring both to her son and to his fashion designs. Mizrahi's clothes are like lovely comedies, mixing both vibrant and soft shades of color with shapes and fabrics previously use

Couture, Eclectic, Glamour, Grand, Quirky, Sophisticated

A child of Modernism, Ettore Sottsass elevated the structures of design to new intellectual and philosophical levels. After receiving an architectural degree from the Polytechnic in Turin, Sottsass opened his own design studio, where he dabbled in furniture, sculptural projects, and the fine and appl

Excessive, Geometric, Hi-tech, Layered, Pop/surrealism/anti-design, Round

In 1927, jobless and distraught over the death of his daughter five years earlier, Richard Buckminster Fuller contemplated suicide. Instead of killing himself, he decided to live the rest of his life as an experiment for the benefit of humankind. He re-christened himself "Guinea Pig B" (B stood for B

Cyberpunk fiction, Hi-tech, International style, Mathematical, Open-ended, Organic, Pioneering, Spiritual

MAYA: Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable. Raymond Loewy summarized his design philosophies with this motto. Loewy was a charismatic and flamboyant man whose persona supported the rise of his very successful design empire. The hand of Raymond Loewy can be seen throughout the country in the Greyhound bus lo

Corporate, Decorative, Epic, Industrial, Post-war american design