Interview: Liz Lane, Fashion Designer

Liz Lane has always called Tuscaloosa, Alabama home. She graduated from the University of Alabama where she attained her Bachelors degree in Apparel Design. She is now a children's designer for a local business, Babytalk, in Northport, Alabama and is producing a women's line of her own.

THE DAP

You're already working on both a women's and children's line. How would you describe your lines?

LIZ LANE

The children's line is classic with an edge. The apparel revolves around age old classics, like smocking, peter pan collars, and puffed sleeves, but I am playing with scales of patters, closures, and colors. The collection will also fill in some gaps in the children's market. Very few companies make preemie and micro-preemie apparel, so that is one thing we are focusing on. Another market that is still very open is boy's apparel. I am making several styles that attempt to pick up the spirit of a little boy. I don't want to design mini-dad apparel for boys and I also do not want it too frilly. It is a really fine line, which makes designing infant and toddler boy's apparel a really interesting challenge.

While I appreciate the very popular androgynous or sultry styles that are so in vogue, I love classic shapes for women's apparel, much as I do for children's apparel. For spring 2012, (hopefully the debut in a few stores), I am using pastels and soft neutrals like ivory and a light brown and accenting them with shades of grey, almost black. The clothing is meant to be worn to work, to school, or to lunch in the park. It has a very day feel.

THE DAP

Are there any designers that influence your collections?

LIZ LANE

I read Women's Wear Daily, an industry newspaper, every morning at breakfast, and it gives me enough information to keep up in the modern market, but I try not to let any one designer influence me too much. However, I do have a sweet spot for Dior and Valentino.

THE DAP

You grew up in the heart of the south, Alabama, and you say in your etsy shop that the south has been an inspiration when designing. However, you've also worked in New York. How has location influenced you?

LIZ LANE

The south is my home. I worked in New York last summer as an intern for a fashion firm and found corporate fashion was all about numbers. I don't feel that constant push from a corporate God in the South. Also, the city had so many ideas there seemed to be no original ideas left to be had. Once I got to my lovely home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I could hear my own thoughts again. Here I have trees, space, time, and humidity; ingredients that are crucial to my creativity, and the rent is cheap.

 

THE DAP

How would you say art influences, and is a part of, fashion?

LIZ LANE

Fashion and art are one in the same. Fashion designers are often inspired by the colors, textures, shapes or themes in visual art. Painters often find themselves using modern or historic apparel design and interior design in their art. Many musicians have embraced fashion as a counterpart, especially during performance. Dancers are very influential to many designers and vice versa. Both forms of art are all about the body.

THE DAP

Your collections contain a range of colors and shape. How has art influenced your own collections?

LIZ LANE

Fashion is my form of art. My mother is an oil painter, so I was exposed to lots of visual art growing up. I have done collections based off of the color pallets of artworks in the Romantic, Rococo, and Baroque period. I prefer to take a trip to an art muesum or a gallery before choosing colors for a collection.

 

THE DAP

What are you planning next?

LIZ LANE

I plan on involving the fashion department [at the University of Alabama] in many of the early stages of my women's line. I was President of Fashion, Inc., the University's fashion organization, last year, and so I might ask the current president if she would want to organize a trunk show for me. There is an excellent college market, and I keep those young women in mind when designing.

THE DAP

What advice would you give other aspiring designers, particularly designers who might not be able to start off in a major city?

LIZ LANE

If you really want to do something, you just have to do it. You may lose other things, like a social life, along the way, but if you really want to go out on your own with a line, you have to give it all you have. Make as many connections as you can. Find friends in big cities that will represent your line and advertise for you, and make sure you have a good product most of all that is affordable to make and sell!

All runway photos credit to John Pope Photography.

Liz Lane's Designs

Liz Lane Apparel Etsy shop

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