Liz ClaiborneFamous American fashion designer and designer, founder of a vast clothing manufacturing empire
Date of Birth: 31.03.1929
Country: USA |
Biography of Liz Claiborne
Liz Claiborne, a renowned American fashion designer and founder of the clothing empire "Liz Claiborne, Inc." exceeded all expectations and reached her zenith by 1990, when she was named among the top 500 profitable companies by "Fortune" magazine. She achieved such high success in just 15 years. Ask any businesswoman or any woman who makes purchases what comes to their mind at the mention of "Liz," and you will receive an instant explanation worthy of a market researcher on Madison Avenue. The names "Liz Sport" and "Liz Claiborne" gained national recognition faster than any other brand in the history of clothing production. The first products were shipped in 1976, and by 1986, they were already enterprises satisfying all American women dreaming of professional, practical, and affordable clothing. "Liz" instantly conquered with its free, yet elegant, modern women's sportswear, designed for all women, no matter where or who they worked as. It was a universal offer, literally for everyone, with a simple yet functional style, combining both variety and compatibility, something that had never been seen before in clothing lines made by competitors. "Fashionable, functional, and affordable" - Liz's trade mark. The most amazing thing is that the "Liz" image was created in less than a decade - an unprecedented feat in the cutthroat world of the clothing business. As often happens, the level of sales and success curves coincided completely with the spiraling recognition and popularity of the "Liz" brand. No other company experienced such a dizzying rise as Liz Claiborne, and no woman earned as much money as she did in such a short period (approximately $200 million in ten years). The reason? She chose the time very accurately. She satisfied the emerging need (elegant clothing) of the market (working women) with the right price (slightly above average), combining variety and large volumes (mixing and matching numerous outfits) in a practical style using a multitude of color shades and materials. Claiborne designed what was created for ordinary women, not for designers with unimaginably slender waists. She solved a problem that demanded attention and executed it with elegance, style, and admirable simplicity. Claiborne revolutionized the shape of specialty clothing for working women. She gave them the opportunity to look chic and professional in modern ready-to-wear clothing. All her magic lay in listening to her inner voice when designing clothes and wanting to dress like a career woman herself. And her inner voice did not deceive her, as the pundits predicted. Her pioneering spirit ignored the opinions of industry experts who would never have agreed with her strategy. She relied on her own vision of the "working American woman's clothing" and even offered to bet on family savings (about $50,000) that her dream would come true. She intuitively felt what kind of clothing women would like to have, and she was completely right, as confirmed by further events in the business world. As a working woman, Claiborne understood that highly educated gurus do not make fashion. She told "Fortune" magazine in 1987, "I worked myself, I wanted to look good, and I didn't think you had to spend your whole fortune to do it. Only a couple of companies were serving our new women in this business - and both in a traditional, mediocre style. I felt we could do it better." Claiborne directly approached the realization of her long-standing dream of creating her own line of fashionable women's clothing. Her understanding and vision led her to transform the marketing and production of women's clothing for working women. Liz Claiborne captured the entire segment of the women's clothing market, as no other company had done in history. "Women's Wear Daily" (1991) characterized Liz Claiborne as a "two billion dollar phenomenon." "Fortune" magazine said about her company, "Liz Claiborne was a great trailblazer," and in 1992, ranked her fourth on the list of the "300 most admired companies" in America. In other words, she ranked second after "Levi Strauss" in the relevant group. "Working Woman" magazine (1992) poured out its feelings, saying, "Today, Liz Claiborne is not only one of the most successful clothing manufacturing companies in America - it is one of the most successful companies in America of our time, period." The unusual nature of this phenomenon in the business world was that, firstly, it was one of two companies founded by women and breaking into the "Fortune" 500 list, and secondly, it was the fastest inclusion in the prestigious list. It took just ten years to cross the threshold of the sacred land of the elite Fortune 500. According to some financial indicators, in 1988, "Fortune" placed Liz Claiborne first among all companies in this list for 1979-1988. It was incredible that the company averaged a 40% annual revenue for ten years. This was unimaginable for a company that did not even exist before 1976. This led "Fortune" to declare Liz Claiborne the most successful female entrepreneur in America. How did Claiborne manage to achieve this incredible height? She was able to consider the needs of the market and then listen to her "inner voice" to meet those needs and fill the market. She told Elise Klench of "Vogue" in 1986, "My initial concept was to dress women who didn't have to wear suits - teachers, doctors, women working in Southern California or Florida, women of all different professions. They didn't have to or want to wear suits necessarily." Claiborne wanted to bet on all the family savings, confident in the correctness of her vision of the future. She placed an advertisement for her bet in the "Women's Wear Daily" and managed to win, symbolically breaking the bank in Las Vegas. In 1991, Liz Claiborne's company became a two billion dollar enterprise and a favorite of Wall Street. In the early 1990s, the company's domination in the women's clothing business was such that its turnover was estimated at 5 to 10% of all trade in the United States. Claiborne's persistence paid off. Elizabeth Claiborne was born in Brussels, Belgium, on March 31, 1929, to American parents from New Orleans. She was the second child but the first girl. Her older brother, Omer Claiborne, owned an art gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her mother, Louise Fenner Claiborne, was a homemaker and a practical seamstress. Her father, Omer Claiborne, was an immigrant banker at the "Morgan Guaranty Trust Company" and was supposed to have a positive influence on her, despite his traditional, if not old-fashioned, views and tedious musings on life and a woman's place in it. He was a direct descendant of the famous William C.C. Claiborne, who governed the state of Louisiana during the War of 1812. Claiborne spoke French before she mastered English, as she grew up in Brussels. She describes her father as a "very old-fashioned" banker who loved art and history. He "dragged her to museums and cathedrals" all over Western Europe, trying to give her a cultural education, which was so important in the world of creative design. During these semi-childish walks, she developed a love for painting and aesthetics, which she later appreciated as a tremendous asset in her work on designing a clothing line. She remembered that it taught her to appreciate an aesthetic approach, in which "the form and appearance of things are no less important than their usefulness and practicality." When Liz was ten, her family fled Brussels to escape the Nazi invasion and returned to New Orleans in 1939. Liz's mother taught her sewing from a very young age, and her strict rules about clothing and appearance were firmly ingrained in her memory. "I was trained to 'see' things. You don't just buy a chair, you buy a good chair that looks nice." She was constantly lectured on what to wear, when, and what color. These instructions blended with her father's lectures on art and aesthetics and, combined, created in her a foundation for artistic design in clothing. Liz Claiborne's formal education consisted of parochial schools resembling monasteries, combined with Roman Catholic religious teaching. Her old-fashioned father never considered that formal education was necessary for a woman (think Meir and Callas) and sent her to an art school in Europe instead of allowing her to finish high school in the United States. Claiborne attended art schools in Brussels, Belgium (1947), and Nice, France (1948), and spent time at the Fine Arts Academy in Paris. Her father wanted her to become a painter and insisted on studying French Impressionist painting. Liz realized very early on that she would never become a great painter and later recalled in an interview with Nina Hyde of the "Washington Post," "I went through all of that, but I'm glad I did because it taught me to see; it taught me to feel color, proportion, and many other things I don't think I would have learned in a design school." She said, "I memorized everything, attended evening classes on cutting and sewing. If you like to draw and if you like to sew - well, what else is there to do but become a designer?" Claiborne recalled that her Roman Catholic family "strongly" protested her work in the fashion industry. She told Adam Smith of "Esquire" (January 1986), "To them, that was - well, too New York, too vulgar." In this way, the always enterprising nineteen-year-old Liz participated in a national design competition during the summer holidays at the art school, sponsored by "Harper's Bazaar," and won. The sketch that brought her victory was a women's coat with a high collar, finely conveying the "war feeling." The prize money gave her confidence, expanded her circle of contacts, and legitimized her professionalism in public opinion, so everything necessary to open the doors to the New York world of clothing production. Using her just-received prize for victory as a ticket to the world of fashion on Seventh Avenue, Claiborne quarreled with her father, bidding farewell to his dream of her artistic career forever, and went to New York to make her fortune. Omer gave her fifty dollars and solemnly said in parting that "a woman's place is in the home," not among the crowd of New York fashionistas, visitors to shameful clothing stores. She temporarily stayed with her aunt and began looking for a job. Claiborne took her first iconoclastic step in her unstoppable quest for design excellence. It took a lot of time, but she was not content to live a Cinderella-like life, "a girl doing good," despite her father's resistance. Early exposure to art became Claiborne's entry into the world of fashion production. Her first job was with Tina Lesser, an unconventional designer who couldn't draw. Claiborne's artistic skills allowed her to participate in this first job only as an assistant, but she was amazed to learn that she also had to be a model. This experience was excellent preparation for her future career, as she found an excellent mentor in the unorthodox Lesser. Claiborne described Lesser in an interview with the "Washington Post" as "a person with an amazingly developed imagination and utterly extraordinary in the fashion business. She generated mind-blowing design ideas and ran her production with an iron fist, but she knew how to recognize talent, and working with her was pure pleasure." In 1950, Claiborne turned twenty-one when she began her career as a designer. She married Ben Schultz, a designer at "Time-Life Books," almost simultaneously with the start of her career. Their only child, Alexander Schultz, was born in 1952, and Claiborne, unlike most women of the time, continued to work. She was one of the few working mothers of the 1950s and described this period as follows: "I was completely absorbed in my work, worked until the last day of pregnancy, and returned to the office almost two weeks later. Looking back, you wouldn't say it was very difficult at all." Claiborne took off during the era of dresses, in the 1950s. She always preferred pants to dresses, but from the very beginning of her career, she earned a reputation as a great designer of various dresses. She said, "It's a lot like the fate of an actress. You succeed in a genre," and it becomes your niche, your role. Claiborne moved on to work with designer Ben Reig and then, as an independent designer, as an assistant to Omar Kiam in his design house on Seventh Avenue. She then spent two years working for "Junior Rite Company" and another year at the production company "Rhea Mann factoring" in Milwaukee, where she met Arthur Ortenberg, an employee of the clothing manufacturing company. As career paths sometimes play the role of fate, they also influence personal relationships. Ortenberg eventually became her second husband after each of them ended their first marriage. In 1957, they both started working in New York. Claiborne rose to the top of the design profession after being appointed as the head designer of the young clothing division at Jonathan Logan. She remained in this position for sixteen years, never losing faith or desire, as her son continued to attend school, and her new husband "was always experimenting and constantly changing jobs. He had his own company, and when it failed, he started looking for himself here and there." Usually, she responded to his habit of wandering in search of work by saying, "I had to be the Rock of Gibraltar." Claiborne told the "New-York Times" in 1980, "I always knew I wanted to get into the design business. It was during her time at Jonathan Logan that she suddenly saw an underserved segment in the moderate-priced clothing market for working women. She failed to persuade the employees of Jonathan Logan that "harmoniously diverse" sportswear, designed for the new working women, could be a viable innovation. The defeat of her idea in the non-creative environment of the Logan company led her to the idea of opening her own company.