The fashion mogul, who first made her mark in the 1970s with a simple silk blouse collection styled after an oversize man's shirt, became a favourite of career women.

She launched California Fashion Industries Inc. in Los Angeles in 1974 with her business partner and husband Leonard Rabinowitz, and within five years the company had become a multi-million dollar brand.

The couple's business really took off when actress and model Lauren Hutton wore one of Little's silk shirts on the cover of People magazine.

Paying tribute to her former boss, Anne Bennion - a department head at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles - tells the Los Angeles Times, "She was really aware of her customers. I'm still surprised how many people tell me to this day, 'Oh, my favourite dress was a Carole Little dress'."

Little was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1934 and moved to Los Angeles when she was a child. She studied fashion design at the Los Angeles Trade Technical College.

She and Rabinowitz struggled in the mid-1990s after two company executives were killed in 1994. The murders were linked to organized crime. The couple divorced in the late 1990s.

California Fashion Industries Inc. later filed for bankruptcy after an ill-fated merger, and the Carole Little label was bought by Cherokee Inc. bosses in 2002.

Little retired from fashion design in 2013.

She died at her home in San Diego, California on 19 September (15).