Of course she attended art school. And like the heroine of many a midcentury first novel, her professional life was launched by a magazine contest. The prize was a guest editorship at Mademoiselle and a trip to London in 1964. She returned to New York, a 21-year-old "youthquaker" in an "Englandy" frame of mind, and got a job designing for U.K. retailer Paul Young's shop, Paraphernalia. The shop employed salesgirls who lounged around smoking pot, reading magazines and listening to the Rolling Stones of their own volition. (This was before retailers sent corporate mixed tapes to their stores, before they invented lifestyles and lifestyle soundtracks.) Johnson met John Cale at a Paraphernalia fashion show when she was dating another Velvet, Sterling Morrison. "It seemed to me we knew all the same people," Cale later wrote in his autobiography, "What's Welsh for Zen." "It was a match made in heaven." When they decided to get married, the Ladies Home Journal offered to pay for the wedding. Magazines "were very much interested in us freaks then," Johnson recalled. Nowadays, magazines mint "freaks" daily.

In the early '70s, commercial designers began to annex eclecticism. Johnson left both Paraphernalia and Cale. She opened a shop called Betsey Bunky Nini and was hired as the designer for the label Alley Cat. In 1971, she became the youngest designer ever to win the Coty Award. It was an honor but not a very good sign. Youth was quaking less and working more. "In the '70s my girl moved up to work and dress-for-work clothes, and my customer disappeared," Johnson lamented.

Her customer reappeared, this time as a punk rocker, in 1978, three years after the birth of her daughter. "All of a sudden in the late '70s there were the English and punk and the CBGBs," she told the Times. "That kind of youth thing came in again, so I thought maybe it's my time again." Once again, Johnson returned to the music scene for inspiration and support and, with partner Chantal Bacon, opened the first Betsey Johnson store in New York. The '80s spawned a procession of ever more flamboyant and theatrical subterranean styles, all of which made room for her on the bandwagon. By 1999, Johnson and Bacon had opened 26 stores. By 2001, they had opened 14 more. Either the cult of Betsey Johnson exploded, or the Betsey Johnson brand was perfectly positioned to capture today's "tween" market. Johnson may still hang out with her friends from her Velvet Underground days, but, for the most part, her clients wear her clothes to see Britney Spears.

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And this part of the story sounds familiar, too. Even if you haven't heard it before, you've heard it before. Once-rebellious youthquaker grows up, becomes a single mom, stays true to herself, launches women-oriented company, "celebrates every day," gets breast implants, removes breast implants, cavorts with Playboy bunnies, survives breast cancer, becomes a brand. As one longtime employee says, "Betsey is the best marketing tools the company has."

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