Sir Edwin Hardy Amies, KCVO, was born in Maida Vale, London. His father was a land agent for the London County Council, and his mother a saleswoman for the dress-maker Madame Gray at Machinka & May, Mayfair, London. Initially destined for a university education and a career involving modern languages, Amies came to be a couturier by chance in the 1930s. After wartime service in SOE, he opened his own house to international acclaim in 1946 at 14 Savile Row. By 1951 he was also designing for Princess Elizabeth, subsequently Queen Elizabeth II. An astute businessman, he opened an in-house Boutique in 1952 and diversified into ready-to-wear clothing and mens-wear in 1959. The Hardy Amies name now continues as a mens-wear brand.

Sir Norman Bishop Hartnell, KCVO (12 June 1901 – 8 June 1979) was a leading British fashion designer, best known for his work for the ladies of the Royal Family. Hartnell gained the Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 1940; and Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth II in 1957.

Hannah Smith was born in Salford, England and lived to become a British supercentenarian and the oldest recognised living person in the world. Smith collapsed on her 110th birthday, and died three days later at Woodhouse, Sheffield. Smith smoked until five years before her death. Smith lived much of her life in Chesterfield and was a former dressmaking lecturer.

Rozette Lopes-Dias Van Thyn (September 19, 1921 – June 27, 2010), known as Rose Van Thyn, was a Holocaust survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II in Poland. She became a naturalized United States citizen residing in Shreveport, Louisiana. In addition to raising a family and working as a professional seamstress, she was active for forty years as a Holocaust educator. She spoke to thousands of children in Shreveport and as an academic fellow to college students about her experiences during the Holocaust.

Policarpa Salavarrieta (c. 26 January 1795 – 14 November 1817), also known as “La Pola,” was a Neogranadine seamstress who spied for the Revolutionary Forces during the Spanish Reconquista of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. She was captured by Spanish Royalists and ultimately executed for high treason. The Day of the Colombian Woman is on “her” day. She is now considered a heroine of the independence of Colombia. Because her birth certificate was never found, her legal given name is unknown. The name Salavarrieta is known only by the names her family and friends used. Her father referred to her as Apolonia in his will, which Salvador Contreras, the priest who formalized the testament on 13 December 1802, confirmed. She was closest to her brother, Viviano, as she became his de facto guardian when her parents died. When the armed forces in Guaduas started looking for her, she began calling herself Policarpa. In her 1817 forged pᴀssport, used to get in and out of Bogotá during the Reconquista, she appeared as “Gregoria Apolinaria.” Andrea Ricaurte de Lozano, whom Policarpa lived with, and officially worked for in Bogotá, as well as Ambrosio Almeyda, a guerrilla leader to whom she supplied information, also called her by that name. Her contemporaries referred to her simply as “La Pola,” but Policarpa Salavarrieta is the name by which she is remembered and commemorated.

Laura Bullion (October 1876 – December 2, 1961) was an outlaw of the Old West. Most sources indicate Bullion was born in Knickerbocker, near Mertzon, in Irion County, Texas; the exact day of her birth is unclear. Data in the 1880 and 1900 federal census suggests a Laura Bullion might have been born on a farm in the township of Palarm near Conway in Faulkner County, Arkansas, and might have grown up in Tom Green County, Texas. Other sources claim Laura Bullion was born in Kentucky in 1873.In the 1890s, Laura Bullion was a member of Butch Cᴀssidy’s Wild Bunch gang; her cohorts were fellow outlaws, including the Sundance Kid, “Black Jack” Ketchum, and Kid Curry. For several years in the 1890s, she was romantically involved with outlaw Ben Kilpatrick (“The Tall Texan”), a bank and train robber and an acquaintance of her father, who had been an outlaw as well. In 1901, Bullion was convicted of robbery and sentenced to five years in prison for her participation in the Great Northern train robbery. She was released in 1905 after serving three years and six months of her punishment.Laura Bullion moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1918, posing as a war widow and using ᴀssumed names. She supported herself as a householder and seamstress, and later as a drapery maker, dressmaker and interior designer. Her fortunes declined in the late 1940s, at which time she was without an occupation. In 1961, she died of heart disease at the Shelby County Hospital in Memphis. Her final resting place is at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis.

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was a former slave who became a successful seamstress, civil activist and author in Washington, DC. She was best known as the personal modiste and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady. Keckley had moved to Washington in 1860 after buying her freedom and that of her son in St. Louis. She created an independent business in the capital based on clients who were the wives of the government elite. Among them were Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis; and Mary Anna Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee. After the American Civil War, Keckley wrote and published an autobiography, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. It was both a slave narrative and a portrait of the First Family, especially Mary Todd Lincoln, and considered controversial for breaking privacy about them. It was also her claim as a businesswoman to be part of the new mixed-race, educated middle-class that were visible among the leadership of the black community. Keckley’s relationship with Mary Todd Lincoln, the President’s wife, was notable for its personal quality and intimacy, as well as its endurance over time.

Ekaterine Giorgis asuli Geladze (1856/1858 – 4 June 1937), commonly known as “Keke”, was the mother of Joseph Stalin. Born into a family of peasants outside of Gori, she married Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, and had three sons; only the youngest, Ioseb, lived. Besarion would leave the family, leaving Geladze to raise her son. Deeply religious, she wanted Ioseb to become a priest, working as a seamstress in Gori in order to pay for his education. Geladze remained in Gori when Ioseb moved to the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary, and stayed there until his rise to power in the Soviet Union as Joseph Stalin. In her older age Geladze lived in Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia; while Stalin wrote to her, he visited rarely, with the last visit in 1935. She died in 1937, and was buried in the Mtatsminda Pantheon in Tbilisi.