Oscar de la Renta was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to a Dominican mother, Carmen María Antonia Fiallo, and a Puerto Rican father, Óscar Avelino De La Renta, owner of an insurance company. The Fiallos, De la Renta's mother's family, were so embedded in Dominican society that they could count poets, scholars, and businessmen, as well as top army brass among their members. Their origin in the island can be traced back to the foundation of San Carlos de Tenerife in 1685 by Canarian settlers. A maternal uncle, Luis Arístides Fiallo Cabral, was a doctor, lawyer, and architect, who received every degree the
Raghavendra Rathore his intermediate schooling. Soon after, he set sail to the US, where he studied a variety of liberal arts from anthropology, astronomy, modern American fiction, and robotics at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He then studied arts and philosophy at the Marlboro College in Vermont, and went on to graduate from the Parsons School of Design in New York City, in 1992. After graduating from Parsons, Rathore went to work for Donna Karan as an assistant designer for DKNY. He then worked at the high design atelier of Oscar de la Renta, and was an assistant to de la Renta.