NEW YORK — Fashion designer Liz Claiborne revolutionized the way working women put together their wardrobes because she was one of them.
She made it easy for them as they pioneered up corporate ladders in the 1970s and 1980s, offering coordinated outfits at once serious and stylish, but also affordable.
Claiborne died Tuesday at New York Presbyterian Hospital after suffering from cancer for a number of years, said Gwen Satterfield, Claiborne's personal assistant. She was 78.
With husband Art Ortenberg and partners Leonard Boxer and Jerome Chazen, Claiborne launched her label in 1976 after working for years as a relatively unknown dress designer. The brand emphasized ensemble sportswear, quality and keeping the price below that of other designers.
The new approach to dressing revolutionized the department-store industry, which had focused on stocking pants in one department and skirts in another.
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"It's what the working woman needed," said Joanne Arbuckle, chairwoman of the art and design department at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "Her coordinated pieces — you went from the turtleneck to sweater to pants to the socks. It's like what Gap did for kids, and she did it beautifully."
The clothes became an instant hit, and the company went public in 1981. By 1985, Liz Claiborne Inc. was the first company founded by a woman to be listed in the Fortune 500, according to the company's Web site.
As the company grew, the designer expanded her offerings to include more casual clothes and also popular licensed accessories. Her handbags with the triangular Liz Claiborne logo and taupe trim were fixtures on the arms of both high school girls and their mothers in the 1980s.
She soon entered the bridge market with Dana Buchman, who had been a designer under Claiborne, just the beginning of her company's diversification: Brands like Ellen Tracy, Kate Spade, Juicy Couture, and recently, Narciso Rodriguez, helped generate sales of almost $5 billion last year.
"The concept was to dress the American working woman because I, as a working woman with a child (from her previous marriage) didn't want to spend hours shopping. Things should be easy. You don't have to dress in that little navy blue suit with a tie," Claiborne told trade paper Women's Wear Daily in 2006. "I wanted to dress her in sportier clothes and colors."
Elisabeth Claiborne was born March 31, 1929, in Brussels, Belgium. She moved to New York in the 1940s to pursue a career in fashion. She married Ortenberg in 1957 after divorcing her first husband, Ben Schultz. She and Schultz had a son, Alexander.
