New York Fashion Style

.Fashion designer. Born Betsey Johnson on August 10, 1942, in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Johnson grew up in the nearby town of Terryville as a child, where she indulged in her two greatest loves: drawing and dance. She had a precocious talent for art, and throughout her youth, she trained in various styles of dance. In fact, it was a combination of these two interests that eventually led Johnson to fashion designing. She loved the elaborate costumes she wore for her dance recitals and spent many long afternoons sketching costume ideas. "What I tried to do was a combination of dance and art," she recalls. Johnson says that she settled on fashion designing when "I realized that making clothes is completing what a drawing can't be—going from two dimensional to reality."