Because the New York City offices of vivacious evening wear designer Pamela Dennis are in the same building as Donna Karan's, Dennis became friendly with Karan's former partner, Tomio Taki. Taki also happens to be on the advisory board of the huge Korean corporation Samsung Chiel, and so when Samsung went looking for a designer to back, Taki suggested Dennis, which is how the New Jersey-born NYU graduate now finds herself owned by a global company that intends to expand her into women's sportswear, menswear, home furnishings, and fragrance.

The energetic 35-year-old designer, known for understated evening clothes that have just the right amount of sparkle, lives with her husband Andy, a financial planner, in West Orange, New Jersey. Between returning from a trunk show in Florida and leaving for one in Nashville, the bubbly blonde with a raspy voice plopped down briefly in the big black velvet chair behind her Louis 14th desk wearing a blue and white checked men's shirt and a heavy, white-gold Franck Muller men's watch that her husband gave her "for about five different birthdays."

Are you the next Donna Karan?
No. I wouldn't mind being the next woman icon out there but I just want to be the next Pamela Dennis. I don't really want to be like anyone.