With 1.5 million hits when you Google her name, you might say Liz Claiborne, who died Tuesday, is a household name. She certainly is in resale and
consignment circles, where the brands she invented are, in a sense, the very definition of many shops. “We carry Liz Claiborne and up” is the phrase many shops use to describe their merchandise.
But many resalers don’t fully appreciate the sway this one woman had over the complete fashion industry.
Claiborne founded Liz Claiborne Inc. in 1976 along with her husband, Art Ortenberg, and Leonard Boxer. Their goal was to create a collection of fashions aimed at the growing number of women entering the work force. “Collection” is the importantword in that last sentence.
The new approach to dressing revolutionized the department store industry, which had only focused on stocking pants in one department and skirts in another. But Liz Claiborne was the first designer to persuade department stores from stocking all her designs, from head to foot, together in one department, so busy working women could shop quickly and chic-ly. Her designs were fashionable but not trendy. And most importantly, they were priced so that both the executive and her secretary could afford them.
“She was perhaps the beginning of the great designer-stylists of our time,” designer Stan Herman, a former president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, said. “She was a trained designer but, more than that, she had a vision of how women should dress. She understood the shape of women and the emancipation of shape and the change of a woman’s shape.”
Starting with an initial investment of $50,000 in savings and $200,000 raised from friends, Liz Claiborne’s company was formed in 1976. Now, Liz Claiborne Inc., whose brands now include Ellen Tracy, Dana Buchman, Juicy Couture, Enyce, Lucky Brand Dungarees, Kate Spade and its most recent addition, the designer label Narciso Rodriguez , is almost a $5 billion business that includes fashion accessories and home decor, as well as men’s and women’s clothing. The company went public in 1981, and by 1985, it was the first company founded by a woman to ascend into the Fortune 500, according to the Liz Claiborne Inc. website.
Read the AP story here, another here. More info here and the photo’s from here.
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