March Women’s History Month-31. This last woman concludes March. Our last quintessential lady is Liz Claiborne (1929) born in Brussels, Belgium to American parents. Furthermore, well-known Belgium is Europe’s geographic, cultural and economic crossroads. In1939, WW II was the cause of the family’s return to New Orleans, LA.
By 1949, Liz Claiborne had won the Jacques Heim National Design Contest. It was sponsored by the magazine, Harper’s Bazaar. Meanwhile, she was a sketch artist for many years at Tina Leser (sportswear). In addition, a former Hollywood costume designer, Omar Kiam, changed fields to be a fashion designer and employed her, too. Claiborne herself was a designer for the Dan Keller and Youth Group Inc. fashion label.
Although the family was in New Orleans, she and her sisters attended a small boarding school in Maryland. Later, high school was in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. Her father was of the belief that she did not need an education. Therefore, she did not finish high school, but rather went back to Belgium in 1947 to study Art informally at the Fine Arts School and Painters Studio, plus the Nice [pronounced nis] Academy in 1948.
Liz Claiborne Inc.
Hence, with this background, she felt that working women did not have practical clothes for work. She, her husband, Art Ortenberg; besides Jerome Chazen, and Leonard Boxer, founded her own design company in 1976. Its name was Liz Claiborne Inc. Nevertheless, by 1988 they cornered one-third of American women’s sportswear clothing market.
The reason for this mega-growth was Liz Claiborne Accessories (founded with Nina MClemore in 1980), was going public in 1981 and made the Fortune 500 list in 1986. Since she was chief, CEO and owner of Liz Claiborne Inc., she was the first woman in the Fortune 500 list to accomplish this distinction.
March Women’s History Month-31, Liz Claiborne
Her marketing strategies differed from the current trend in the 1976-1988 era because she put her clothing line displayed by itself. Everything she offered was available in that one specific section, whether it was jackets, blouses or slacks, but all produced by Liz Claiborne Inc. Her retirement, along with her husband Art, came in 1989. She had also purchased Kayser-Roth (produces Liz Cliborne accessories). Their retirement included a foundation distributing funds to environmental causes, (Nature on PBS) and other nature conservation projects world-wide.
Afterwards, she received most of her awards in the 1990’s. The first was in 1990 from the National Business Hall of Fame, sponsored by Junior Achievement. 1991 saw two awards; the first one being a National Sales Hall of Fame and the second one is an Honorary Doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design. Two years later, she was awarded a Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement. In 2000, the Council of Fashion Designers of America gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award. She passed on June 26, 2007.
Additional Outstanding Women
This Ghanaian woman who was born on April 18, 1919, named Esther Afua Ocloo was a co-founder of Women’s World Banking. She was educated in agriculture and food technology in the U.K. Upon her return to Ghana, she focused on helping other women in running their own small businesses with the management skills she had acquired in the U.K. She was a relentless worker promoting economic empowerment of women. With her business of Nkulenu Industries Limited, Ocloo was recognized and awarded the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger in 1990. Her passing was on Feb. 8, 2002.
A segregated South Side of Chicago was the birthplace for Lorraine Hansberry on May 19, 1930. She wrote A Raisin in the Sun, saying, ”I’m going to write a social drama about Negroes that will be good art.”
She was the first African-American female author to have her play performed on Broadway. It opened on March 11, 1959. She was the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. A Raisin in the Sun has a life and legacy of its own. In addition, Nina Simone based a song on Hansberry’s comment, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.”
Prominent in her life were many notables. (See more information here.) She wrote a poem entitled “Lynchsong” about Willie McGee. Active in US civil rights movements and global struggles, she explained them in terms of female participants. We lost her on Jan. 12, 1965.
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