Liz Claiborne

Claiborne was born in Brussels to American parents. She came from a prominent Louisiana family with an ancestor, William C. C. Claiborne, who served as Louisiana's first governor after statehood, during the War of 1812. Rather than finishing high school, Claiborne went to Europe to study art in the studios of painters. Her father did not believe that she needed an education, so she studied art informally. ==Career==

In 1949, Claiborne won the Jacques Heim National Design Contest (sponsored by ''Harper's Bazaar''), and then moved to Manhattan where she worked for years in the Garment District on Seventh Avenue, She worked as a designer for the Dan Keller and Youth Group Inc. fashion labels. Liz Claiborne Inc. Claiborne became frustrated by the failure of the companies that employed her to provide practical clothes for working women, so, with husband Art Ortenberg, Leonard Boxer, and Jerome Chazen, she launched her own design company, Liz Claiborne Inc., in 1976. In 1980, Liz Claiborne Accessories was founded through employee Nina McLemore (who decades later would launch a label of her own, in 2001). Liz Claiborne Inc. went public in 1981 and made the Fortune 500 list in 1986 with retail sales of $1.2 billion. Claiborne listed all employees in her corporate directory in alphabetical order, to circumvent what she perceived as male hierarchies. She controlled meetings by ringing a glass bell and became famous for her love of red—"Liz Red". She would sometimes pose as a saleswoman to see what average women thought of her clothes. ==Personal life, retirement, and death==

Claiborne's first marriage was to Ben Shultz; it ended in divorce in 1954, after she met Arthur Ortenberg. In 1957, she and her then co-worker, Arthur (1926 - 2014) married. She had a son from her first marriage, Alexander G. Shultz, and two stepchildren from her second marriage, Neil Ortenberg and Nancy Ortenberg. She died of the cancer on June 26, 2007, at the age of 78. ==Awards and honors==

• 1990 - National Business Hall of Fame, sponsored by Junior Achievement • 1991 - National Sales Hall of Fame • 1991 - Honorary Doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design • 1993 - Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement • 2000 - Council of Fashion Designers of America Lifetime Achievement Award ==References==