The first African American designer to achieve international acclaim, Burrows, an FIT grad, launched a collection with Roz Rubenstein for Bonwit Teller in 1969. Later that year Joel Schumacher, then the visual director at Henri Bendel, introduced Burrows to Geraldine Stutz. She hired him on the spot and his shop-within-a-shop boutique Stephen Burrows World opened there in 1970. In l973 he was one of five American and five French designers to show at Versailles, France, an event that skyrocketed his career. (Coty awards in 1973, 74 and 77.) Urged by Halston to set up business on Seventh Avenue, Burrows left Bendel and opened his namesake business. In 2006, the CFDA honored him with the Board of Directors Special Tribute, and later he was invited by the Chambre Syndicale to return to Paris and present his spring/summer collection there. Burrows’ work has been highlighted in two documentaries plus retrospectives at FIT, New York’s Tribute Gallery and White Chapel Gallery in London. He has a star on the Fashion Walk of Fame.