Co-Founder and CEO, Lafayette 148

Deirdre Quinn

A born entrepreneur, Deirdre Quinn’s early love of the craft inspired a degree in fashion design. Her passion for production and merchandising led her to Donna Karan, Escada and Liz Claiborne, where she traveled to more than seventy countries. In 1996, she joined forces with two other fashion veterans and visionaries, Shun Yen Siu and Ida Siu, to found Lafayette 148 New York, creating one of the very rare, vertically integrated fashion brands. More than twenty years later, Deirdre’s boundless drive to discover what’s next continues to lead the brand towards the future, including the move to a soaring, sustainably built loft space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. A member of the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Board of Trustees, Deirdre has a lifelong love of learning and a devotion to enriching the world through education.