Gloria Vanderbilt

Gloria Vanderbilt jeans by Murjani, 1976 The jeans that put a designer's name on the back pocket and turned denim into a status label. Vanderbilt teamed up with the manufacturer Mohan Murjani to launch the line in 1976, with her name embroidered on the back pocket and a white swan on the coin pocket. Pitched as jeans designed to fit a woman rather than adapted from men's workwear, the line passed $200 million in sales at its 1980 peak. The Murjani Group calls them the first designer jeans, and the name-on-the-pocket idea became the template the designer-jeans boom followed.