as a sketcher for dress firms on 7th Avenue. She started her fashion career while at the Traphagen School of Fashion in New York City, studying between 1937 and 1938. Fashion Career 1940s and 1950s In 1940, Anne Klein began making a name for herself as a designer. She first began designing for Maurice Rentner at his business, Maurice Rentner, Inc., which produced ready-to-wear designs for men and women. In 1944, Anne Klein joined Bonnie Cashin and Claire McCardell to form a female design trio who laid the foundations of American sportswear. In 1948 she married clothing manufacturer Ben Klein and they launched the Junior Sophisticates label. Junior Sophisticates offered elegant styles to younger women with smaller figures. Anne Klein was the principal designer at Junior Sophisticates until 1960, when her marriage ended. It was during this time of ready-to-wear fashion, "modern" designs for women, and an increase in the number of women in the workplace that Klein was one of the first to introduce, and to become known for, "separates": individual pieces which work together as a whole, as opposed to dresses. About this time she began winning awards in the fashion industry including: 1954 she was awarded the Mademoiselle Merit Award. 1954 she was awarded the Coty American Fashion Critics Award. 1959 she was awarded the Neiman-Marcus Fashion Award for the first time, leading to international recognition as a fashion designer. Fashion Career 1960s and 1970s In 1960 her marriage to Ben Klein ended, as did her association with Junior Sophisticates. During the early 1960s, after her divorce from Ben Klein, she kept the name Klein and worked as a freelance designer, reinvigorating well-known but faltering lines such as Pierre Cardin coats and Evan-Picone. This freelance work helped to fund her 1963 opening of Anne Klein Studio on 57th Street. Also in 1963 she married a second time to Matthew "Chip" Rubenstein. In 1961 she was one of a select group to win the American Creativity Award. In 1964 she was awarded the Lord & Taylor Rose Award for independent thinking, an award first given to Albert Einstein. In 1968, she established the Anne Klein & Company label as director and co-owner with her husband, on 39th Street. The label was opened in collaboration with investor Gunther Oppenheim, a fashion industry stalwart. The next ten years saw an expansion of the business, with over 750 department stores and