The other day someone asked me if I had ever heard of Betsey Johnson.

She had bought something with that label. She was much younger than I.

I hadn't thought of the designer for many years, but yes, I said, I have heard of her. In fact, we go way back.

Johnson is one of a handful of young designers who came on the fashion scene in the late '60s and has managed to remain to the present day.

I would never have predicted her success. I might even have ruled against it, although there was one thing for sure about this young woman -- She was memorable.

That's a polite word. Quite honestly, at the time, she was shocking. A flash in the pan, I thought. She entertained editors who attended her shows, and we considered them good material for our reports from New York City, just as spotting Andy Warhol was worth mentioning.

Colorful, weird, original but going nowhere. Just too off-the-wall to matter much in any serious way but fun to write about.

I was wrong. She was just way ahead of her time. Much like Andy.

It was the early '70s and a young woman walked into the then-Pittsburgh Press offices. She was wearing black silk wide-legged pants, black turtleneck wool sweater, a blue printed scarf around her neck and a hip-length camel corduroy belted jacket.

It doesn't sound unusual today, not at all. But it was eye-catching -- and odd -- at the time. Her makeup was equally dramatic and applied a bit sloppily. But everybody turned around to look at her.

That was the point, and she said so. "You must be theatrical to create interest. In New York I have to exaggerate to be recognized, but now I can show I am really basically a good designer."

I remember that meeting well. First of all, the new direction in clothes by many young designers had editors, and I include myself, looking to the heavens for explanation, or relief, from psychedelic colors and costumey itsy-bitsy pieces which went far astray from, shall we say, Blass or Norell, who did all the Uptown stuff.

A new era had definitely begun, and Betsey Johnson was right there leading the way. She was under 30.

Equally interesting was the fact that other designers who were in this same movement of creative and often controversial style fell by the wayside. She fooled everybody. She certainly fooled me.

Pauline Trigere never did cartwheels down a runway, but it became Johnson's signature ending for a show. I've heard it still is.

In 1999 the Council of Fashion Designers of America bestowed on her its "timeless talent" award.

Funky, yes, but her lacy embroidered dresses are also sold in such stores as Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue.

She's now 63. She has a vacation home in Mexico. In 2004 she was named one of America's 25 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs.

Her clothes are described as whimsical and over-the-top, colorful, capricious, a celebration of exuberance, frothy with embellishment and sexiness; it's a little of this and a whole lot of that.

Strangely enough, or maybe not so strange, Johnson was part of the Warhol scene in the '60s, and when she talked to me she was dating a member of his Velvet Underground singing group, John Cale. They eventually married. The late Edie Sedgwick, also a Warhol playmate, whose life is now a movie starring Sienna Miller, worked for her as a house fit model.

Madonna, Courtney Love, Cher, Lenny Kravitz and Prince have worn her clothes.

That makes it hard to understand how stores like Macy's, Bloomie's and Saks carry her clothes for the average woman, but herein lies her success. Women who are not in show business also like her styles in 2007.

Johnson has just gotten bigger and better. She has been called naughty as well as "the cartwheel kook" and is credited with looks adapted by rockers. She still dresses the part in her 60s, which might be tutus, teddies, velveteen knickers or crinolines.

Yes, I've heard of Betsey Johnson.

All those years ago she said to me, "I'm young. I can't help it if older designers have lost their creativity. There are so many older store buyers who don't understand this youth thing."

And older former fashion writers too.

Add this twist: I saw a beautifully crocheted tunic in a large floral cutout pattern, and as the mother of a future bridegroom with an April wedding planned in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, I found myself taking a second look.

Yep, the designer is Betsey Johnson.

Go figure.