Junya Watanabe Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 2009

Bottega Veneta's founders, Michele Taddei and Renzo Zengiaro, launched their leather-goods atelier in Vicenza, Italy, in 1966. The local sewing machines available to them couldn't handle the thick hides typically used for handbags, so their artisans, working while standing, turned to thin, supple nappa leather instead, hand-weaving it into a durable, sculptural crosshatched pattern. That technique became known as intrecciato, Italian for "interwoven" or "braided," and it remains the house's defining signature over half a century later, expressed today through bags like the Cassette, Jodie, and Sardine. The house's philosophy of letting the weave itself carry the brand, with no visible logo required, became summed up in its unofficial motto: "When your own initials are enough."

Pierre Balmain launched his namesake house on September 18, 1945, working out of a small Paris apartment at 44 Rue François 1er that had just been vacated by occupying German soldiers following the city's liberation the year before. His debut collection was defined by architectural tailoring, cinched waists, and strong shoulders, a silhouette shaped by his formal training in architecture. That aesthetic, later nicknamed "Jolie Madame" after his first fragrance, predated Christian Dior's "New Look" by two years, even though Dior is often credited as the one who popularized the post-war return to structured, feminine silhouettes.

In 1982, New Balance released the 990, the first sneaker in history to carry a $100 retail price, a genuinely shocking figure at the time, when Nike and Adidas's most expensive shoes topped out between $60 and $80. That same year saw two other athletic-shoe landmarks: Nike's Air Force 1, designed by Bruce Kilgore as the first basketball shoe to use Nike's Air cushioning technology, and Reebok's Freestyle, the first athletic shoe ever designed specifically for women, which would go on to define the 1980s aerobics boom. But it was the New Balance 990's steep price that turned it into an instant status symbol, particularly in the DMV (Washington D.C., Maryland, Virginia), where it became closely tied to the region's go-go music scene and street culture throughout the '80s and '90s, long before the shoe found mainstream fashion appeal decades later.