Betty Yokova (1901 – 24 April 1995) was a Czech-born French fashion designer who became an award-winning American fur designer in New York.
Biography
Betty Yokova was born in Prague, Bohemia in 1901,[1] and studied art in Paris.[2] She began her fashion career in Paris in the 1930s, opening her own couture house despite not having had any training or apprenticeships with other fashion houses.[2] At the outbreak of World War II, Yokova closed her establishment.[2]
In 1948 Yokova moved to New York and joined Anna Potok as a designer for Potok and her brother's fur house, Maximilian.[2] She and Potok worked together on the designs, and were credited as co-designers.[3] Apart from a brief interlude in the early 1960s where she worked at Bernham Stein, she worked for Maximilian until 1963, when she left to design for another furrier, A. Neustadter & Sons.[2] In 1963, she was presented with a Coty Award for her fur designs at Neustadter.[4] In 1964, Yokova described her approach to design as seeing the pelts as fabrics, and being inspired by their textures and colors.[2]
She retired in 1967, and died on 24 April 1995, at the Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport. She was survived by her sister.[2]