[4] Galanos is known for designing clothing for America's social elite, including Nancy Reagan, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and others.

[1] In 1944, Galanos got a position as a general assistant at the New York East 49th Street emporium of Hattie Carnegie, the incubator of such talents as Jean Louis, Pauline Trigère, and Norman Norell.

Then, in 1945, his former Traphagen style and fashion teacher Elisabeth Rorabach called his attention to a help-wanted ad she had seen in The New York Times, placed by textile magnate Lawrence Lesavoy.

"His beautiful wife, Joan, was hoping to launch a ready-to-wear dress business in California, and they were looking for a designer," recalled Galanos.

"Out of pity," Galanos said, Jean Louis, head costume designer at Columbia Pictures, hired him as a part-time assistant sketch artist.

Couturier Robert Piguet absorbed the American into his stable of assistants, among whom were Pierre Balmain, Hubert de Givenchy, and Marc Bohan.

[6] He then opened his New York showroom where a Neiman Marcus clothing buyer discovered him and predicted his styles would soon "set the world on fire."

[11] Legendary magazine editors and style arbiters such as Diana Vreeland, Eleanor Lambert, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Eugenia Sheppard became fans, ensuring that he would become a household name within months.

After her death, Miss Russell's wardrobe – nearly all of it Galanos – was divided among a number of costume collections across the country as gifts in her memory from her husband, Frederick Brisson.

[14] Nondas Keramitsis, Galanos' head tailor, moved to Los Angeles from his native Greece to make women's clothing.

His business was more comparable to a couture house than a ready-to-wear manufacturer; there was a great amount of hand work in each garment, and all of his famous beadwork and embroidery was done by his staff.

"[1] It was precisely this couture quality and the timelessness of Galanos' designs that caused his clients to never part with their gowns and continue wearing them over many years.

But Galanos could also make soft mink coats look lean, willowy and graceful by the way he shaped the skins in the back or carved the hemline in a back-dipping curve.

According to Bernardine Morris of the New York Times, Galanos' "best design is a slender coat with the skins worked vertically through the bodice and horizontally for the skirt, an example of elegant proportioning.

[22] The fact that Mrs. Reagan wore a 16-year-old Galanos gown to her first state dinner at the White House attested to the timelessness and durability not only of his workmanship, but more importantly, of his design.

[22] This type of occurrence was commonplace among his faithful customers, who included Marilyn Monroe,[23] Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Grace Kelly, Diana Ross,[7] Betsy Bloomingdale,[24] Rosalind Russell, Marlene Dietrich, Dorothy Lamour,[25] Judy Garland, Loretta Young, Ali MacGraw,[26] Ivana Trump,[27] Carolyne Roehm,[28] Kim Basinger, Arianna Huffington[29] and many other notable personalities and film and media stars.

Among those at table were Lyn Revson, Gordon Parks, Barbara Walters, Arianna Stassinopoulos, former Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff and his wife, Casey, Freddie and Arlette Brisson, Mary McFadden, Tammy Grimes, Stephen Paley, John Loring, Gloria Vanderbilt, William Macomber, Sybilla Clark, Alex Gregory, Frank and Gloria Schiff and Bob Colacello.

In an interview with WWD over lunch at the Pierre Hotel in New York he asked the reporter, Eric Wilson, shaking his head in contempt, "How many women can wear just a patch over their crotch and a bra?

"[32] Of contemporary designers, he admired the work of Ralph Rucci, who shares Galanos' views of the state of fashion at the beginning of the new millennium.

"I thought what he was doing was really terrific," Galanos told Cathy Horyn of The New York Times in 2002, "he has the same kind of concept that I had – beautiful details that you don't see in ready-to-wear.

"[37] Galanos's vintage gowns remain chic, sought after and popular among the international jet-set, Hollywood stars and supermodels, and have been seen on such notable women as Celine Dion,[38] Renée Zellweger, Nicole Kidman, Jessica Alba,[26] Heidi Klum,[39] Tatiana Sorokko,[40] Amber Valletta,[41] Christina Ricci,[42] Ashley Olsen[43] and Katie Holmes.

[44] Having reinvented himself as an abstract photographer, in 2006, at age 82, Galanos's first exhibition of photography was held to great acclaim at the Serge Sorokko Gallery in San Francisco.

The subjects were crafted by Galanos out of paper or fabric and then photographed in evocative light, creating subtle variations of tone and shading.

[1] In the year 2000, the City of New York began honoring American fashion designers by placing bronze plaques along the pavement of Seventh Avenue.

[49] In 2007, he became the recipient of the Rodeo Drive Walk of Style Award, and one year later, in 2008,[50] he received an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Academy of Art University.

"To James Galanos, fashion is all about making women look beautiful," wrote Anne-Marie Schiro in The New York Times, "and he has devoted 44 years of his life to designing clothes to that end.

"[52] He "was always a hero to all those who worshiped at the feet of fashion, not just those who wore the clothes", wrote Bernardine Morris in an introduction to the catalogue of Galanos' retrospective exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1996.

This may be James Galanos' major contribution to the fashion world: he brought brilliance and quality to styles meant to be bought off the rack"[53] In September 2016, the Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection of the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University received a gift from the James G. Galanos Foundation of nearly 700 ensembles.