Hanae Mori is one of the world's most celebrated fashion designers. A queen of style in France and in Japan, both of whose countries' governments have awarded her their highest cultural honors: She was given the Order of Legion d'Honneur by Francois Mitterrand in 1989 and received the Order of Culture from Emperor Akihito in 1996.
Mori is also the only Asian to have joined La Chambre Syndicate de la Couture Parisienne, an exclusive group of designers who show two haute-couture collections a year in Paris. She's designed costumes for movie masterpieces by directors Yasujiro Ozu and Kozaburo Yoshimura; outfitted the Japanese Olympic teams and created uniforms for Japan Airlines.
Always elegant, the 81-year-old Mori embodies miyabi, the Japanese ideal of dignity that dates back to the Heian Period (794-1185), an era she takes inspiration from by fusing its values into her signature East-meets-West style. Just like her beloved butterflies, which have the broadest visual spectrum of all living things and a sense of taste reportedly 2,400 times more developed than humans, Mori is famous for a vision that transforms women into even more beautiful creatures than they could have ever have dreamed of becoming.