Albert Nipon is an American fashion design

Fashion design

Fashion design is the art of the application of design and aesthetics or natural beauty to clothing and accessories. Fashion design is influenced by cultural and social latitudes, and has varied over time and place. Fashion designers work in a number of ways in designing clothing and accessories....

er and ladies clothing manufacturer.

Born and raised in West Philadelphia

West Philadelphia

West Philadelphia, nicknamed West Philly, is a section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Though there is no official definition of its boundaries, it is generally considered to reach from the western shore of the Schuylkill River, to City Line Avenue to the northwest, Cobbs Creek to the southwest, and...

, Nipon turned a small maternity clothes

Maternity clothing

Maternity clothing is worn by women in some cultures as an adaptation to changes in body size during pregnancy.-History:Dresses did not follow a wearer's body shape until the Middle Ages. When western European dresses began to have seams, affluent pregnant women opened the seams to allow for...

 company into an internationally known producer of ultra-feminine women's clothing

Clothing

Clothing refers to any covering for the human body that is worn. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic and is a feature of nearly all human societies...

 during the early 1970s whose instant popularity caught the fashion

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...

 world by surprise and quickly made Nipon's "Albert Nipon" brand of clothing famous. Sales of Albert Nipon dresses reached $60 million in 1984, and Nipon counted among his celebrity clients Mary Tyler Moore

Mary Tyler Moore

Mary Tyler Moore is an American actress, primarily known for her roles in television sitcoms. Moore is best known for The Mary Tyler Moore Show , in which she starred as Mary Richards, a 30-something single woman who worked as a local news producer in Minneapolis, and for her earlier role as...

, Barbara Walters

Barbara Walters

Barbara Jill Walters is an American broadcast journalist, author, and television personality. She has hosted morning television shows , the television newsmagazine , former co-anchor of the ABC Evening News, and current contributor to ABC News.Walters was first known as a popular TV morning news...

, Rosalynn Carter

Rosalynn Carter

Eleanor Rosalynn Carter is the wife of the former President of the United States Jimmy Carter and in that capacity served as the First Lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981. As First Lady and after, she has been a leading advocate for numerous causes, perhaps most prominently for mental...

 and Nancy Reagan

Nancy Reagan

Nancy Davis Reagan is the widow of former United States President Ronald Reagan and was First Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989....

.

Nipon's fall was as rapid as his rise; in 1984, he was indicted for tax evasion

Tax evasion

Tax evasion is the general term for efforts by individuals, corporations, trusts and other entities to evade taxes by illegal means. Tax evasion usually entails taxpayers deliberately misrepresenting or concealing the true state of their affairs to the tax authorities to reduce their tax liability,...

 and bribery

Bribery

Bribery, a form of corruption, is an act implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or...

 in an investigation of the Philadelphia IRS

Internal Revenue Service

The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...

 office and served time in a federal penitentiary.

But the designer's career did not end with his conviction and incarceration

Incarceration

Incarceration is the detention of a person in prison, typically as punishment for a crime .People are most commonly incarcerated upon suspicion or conviction of committing a crime, and different jurisdictions have differing laws governing the function of incarceration within a larger system of...

. After Nipon served time, his company declared bankruptcy

Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

 in 1988 but survived intact as Albert Nipon Licensing, and Albert Nipon designs and fragrances continue to be available in dress shops and fashion boutiques around the world.