Sarah Burton, Sara Blakely, Middleton Sisters Make Time 100 List

By Erin Donnelly 04/18/12 at 09:00 AM

Photo courtesy of TIME

The cover of TIME's 100 List issue.

Anna Wintour, Carine Roitfeld, Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs ... fashion has no shortage of power players, but only two tastemakers managed to crack the 2012 edition of Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Proving that certain names might be more fortuitous than others, Alexander McQueen's Sarah Burton and Spanx founder Sara Blakely are the sole fashion figures on the just-released Time 100, which also includes President Obama, Adele, Rihanna (who earns a gushing write-up by none other than Stella McCartney), Tilda Swinton, and basketball star Jeremy Lin.

On a career high after being featured as a "self-made billionaire" by Forbes, Blakely poses in a saucy girdle (what else?)—not, as Katie Couric points out, that she needs one.

"The comic irony of Spanx is that the woman who became a billionaire after inventing them doesn't even need them," Couric writes in her tribute to Blakely. "Poor thing, she was a size 2 when the idea hit her.

"But luckily for Sara Blakely, 41, plenty of us had a little junk in our trunks. As we were trying to hide our guts, she trusted hers. Despite the naysayers, with just $5,000 and a great idea she proved that you don't need an M.B.A. to know what women want and how to market it."

Meanwhile, longtime McQueen fan Sarah Jessica Parker praises "girl next door" Burton, who would do Lee McQueen proud with her extraordinary designs, including the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding dress.

"She thinks about women and art and stories, weaves her tale into the future of fashion," Parker writes. "On the runway she is inspired. And she creates the most beautiful and complex layers and simple, perfect lines. And a waist. Keeping up the tradition.

Photos courtesy of TIME

From left: Sarah Burton, Catherine and Pippa Middleton, and Sara Blakely.

"And she did the undoable. A royal wedding dress that could never live up to the impossible dream. But it did. The whole world gasped in astonishment and sighed in reverie as she made one young woman's fantasy a reality for everyone."

Speaking of the devil, the former Kate Middleton—who was last year named one of Time's Person of the Year runner-ups—and her kid sister Pippa have also made the cut, with the magazine's Europe editor Catherine Mayer gushing over their "real class."

"The Middletons have become avatars of aspiration," Mayer writes. "Other women aim to dress like them, to emulate their easy athleticism and their more problematic slenderness."

And if we can score a prince while we're at it, so be it.