Liz Claiborne ‘s biography
Elizabeth Claiborne was born in 1929 in Brussels (Belgium). Her parents were American. Her older brother, Omer Klayborn, is an art gallery owner in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mother, Louise Fenner Klayborn, was a down-to-earth housewife and seamstress. Her father, Omer Klayborn, was an expatriate banker. Liz came from a prominent Louisiana family and was a descendant of William Klayborn, who was governor of Louisiana during the 1812 War.
Klayborn 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” throughout Western Europe, trying to give her the cultural education so important in the world of creative design. During these half-child walks, she fell in love with painting and aesthetics, which she appreciated as a huge asset in her later work on the design of the clothing line. She recalled that this taught her to value the aesthetic approach, according to 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 the art of sewing from a very early age, and her strict rules regarding dress and appearance are firmly etched in her memory. girls. “I was taught to ‘see’ things. She was constantly taught what to wear, when and what color. These instructions mixed with her father’s lectures on art and aesthetics and, combined, created in her the foundation for artistic design in clothes.
Liz in adulthood
In 1949, Klayborn won the Jacques Heim National Design Contest, sponsored by the renowned fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar. After that, she went to New York, where she worked for several years in the Garment District on Seventh Avenue. There, Liz served as a sketch maker for the sportswear brand Tina Leser. In addition, Klayborn has worked as a designer for Dan Keller and the Youth Group Corporation.
Liz married Time-Life Books designer Ben Schultz at about the same time she started her career.
Their only child, Alexander Schultz, was born in 1952, and Klayborn, unlike most women at the time, continued to work. She was one of the few working mothers of the fifties and described this period in this way: “I was completely absorbed in my work, worked until the last day of pregnancy and returned to the office almost two weeks later.
And in 1957. Liz married Art Ortenberg.
In 1976, Claiborne, frustrated by the failures of the companies she worked for, decided to start her own label, which she named Liz Claiborne Inc. This business was crowned with instant success: already in 1976, the company’s sales amounted to $ 2 million, and in 1978 they grew to $ 23 million, and by 2005 they amounted to about $ 5 billion.
In 1980, Liz Claiborne Accessories was founded by Nina McLemore. The brand has launched a line of exclusive, exquisite jewelry made from gold, pearls and precious stones. A line of sophisticated fragrances has also been created.
Company success
In 1981 Liz Claiborne Inc. went public and entered the Fortune 500 with $ 1.2 billion in retail sales. Sometimes Liz herself worked in her stores as a salesperson, doing this in order to get the opinion of women about her clothes.
Liz Klayborn retired from active management of the company in 1989. By this time, she owned a number of other companies, for example, Kaiser-Roth (accessories manufacturer Liz Claiborne).
Liz Klayborn retired from active management of the company in 1989. By this time, she owned a number of other companies, for example, Kaiser-Roth (accessories manufacturer Liz Claiborne).
Today, Liz Claiborne is one of the three largest clothing manufacturers in the United States.
Brand management owns over 30 percent of the U.S. womenswear business.
Jewelry
