Liz Claiborne Women's Fashion Brand

Anne Elisabeth Jane Claiborne was a Belgian-born American fashion designer and businesswoman. Her success was built upon stylish yet affordable apparel for career women featuring colorfully tailored separates that could be mixed and matched. Claiborne is best known for co-founding Liz Claiborne Inc., which in 1986 became the first company founded by a woman to make the Fortune 500 list; Claiborne was the first woman to become chair and CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The product formula and the corporate milestone belong together: mix-and-match career separates, colourfully tailored and affordable, built a company large enough to break a national record.

Liz Claiborne Inc. was founded in 1976 by Liz Claiborne, Art Ortenberg, Leonard Boxer, and Jerome Chazen. In 1980, Nina McLemore founded Liz Claiborne Accessories. Liz Claiborne Inc. went public in 1981 and had made the Fortune 500 list in 1986. After retiring in 1989, Claiborne died on June 26, 2007, at the age of 78 from complications from cancer. Four founders, an accessories line four years later, a public listing at five years and the Fortune 500 at ten: the timeline shows a company that scaled on a wardrobe system - separates designed to combine - rather than on seasonal hits.

JCPenney Exclusivity and the Fifth & Pacific Transformation

On October 8, 2009, JC Penney Co. (based out of Plano, TX) announced that it would become the exclusive retailer for the Liz Claiborne brand. That is the brand's modern retail fact: the label whose separates once anchored department stores became one retailer's exclusive. On May 15, 2012, Liz Claiborne Inc. officially became Fifth & Pacific, Inc. and shifted focus to three brands - Juicy Couture, Kate Spade New York, and Lucky Brand Jeans. On February 25, 2014, Fifth & Pacific was renamed Kate Spade & Company, and Craig A. Leavitt succeeded William McComb, whose retirement marked the official end of the company's transformation from Liz Claiborne to Kate Spade.

Read that transformation carefully, because it confuses many shoppers: the COMPANY Liz Claiborne Inc. ceased to carry its founder's name in 2012 and became Kate Spade & Company in 2014, while the Liz Claiborne BRAND continued at JCPenney under the 2009 exclusivity. Two of the three focus brands in the story live in this directory beside this profile - Kate Spade in the K letter and Lucky Brand later in this letter - which makes this page the hinge of the whole corporate tale. No official brand site is given; the references are Apparel Search's own Liz Claiborne news, profile, financial, definition and careers coverage, all linked from this page.

Shopping Liz Claiborne Separates

Shop the brand by its founding system: separates that mix and match. Buy in colour families so jackets, skirts, trousers and knit tops combine across a working week, check tailoring at the shoulder and waist where career clothing earns its price, and judge affordability against the brand's own positioning - stylish yet affordable was the formula that built a Fortune 500 company, so a piece priced like luxury or finished like discount has missed the brand's mark in one direction or the other. Vintage founder-era pieces predate her 1989 retirement and are the collector's form of the label.

A Belgian-born designer, a 1976 four-founder start, a 1981 listing, the 1986 Fortune 500 first, a 2009 JCPenney exclusive and a corporate renaming that ended at Kate Spade & Company in 2014: Liz Claiborne is the L letter's career-women landmark, and its mix-and-match separates remain the working wardrobe idea she proved at national scale.