Liz Lange: The Woman Who Revolutionized Maternity Wear is Back!
It all started at the hair salon.
Most weekends in the summer, Liz Lange and I bump into each other while getting our hair done.
What can I say? I love a blowout. And obviously, so does she.
I had heard of Liz long before I met her.
Liz Lange at Grey Gardens, her home in East Hampton, NY
She singlehandedly changed the game for pregnant women everywhere when she created Liz Lange Maternity, the first designer clothing line for pregnant women.
It was revolutionary.
A decade later, she sold the company.
Yes, she made a fortune… but by her own admission, was feeling lost.
Then, in the midst of the pandemic, Liz Lange announced she was buying and becoming CEO and creative director of Figue, a brand known for its chic kaftans and embellished army jackets.
Which takes us back to the hair salon, where Liz and I decided we should chat about her new fashion venture… and, while we’re at it, her popular Instagram, and her crazy family upbringing that is now the subject of a popular podcast.
But we began by discussing the aha moment that made her famous.
“I AM SO SORRY, BUT I HAVE TO DO THIS”
ALINA CHO: Early in your career, you interned for Stephen DiGeronimo.
LIZ LANGE: It was a turning point. I met this struggling designer, Stephen DiGeronimo. He worked at Michael Kors, he worked at Calvin Klein. I was in love with the clothes. I begged him to let me come work for him. Basically, they needed a fit model, I was a fit model. They needed to find fabric, I found it. He wanted to put together a cheap fashion show, I helped him do that. And so, I kind-of just learned it all.
ALINA CHO: Do I have this right? It was during that time that your pregnant friends would come to you and say, "Wait a minute, why can't I find clothes like this?"
LIZ LANGE: That’s what happened. They would come in and they would basically squeeze themselves into anything we were doing that had a little bit of stretch in it. So, what I noticed, was my friends who were generally on the smaller side or certainly smaller at the beginning, because pregnancy is an evolution, didn't want to wear hugely oversized clothing which was what was being offered to them.
ALINA CHO: Yeah, muumuus.
LIZ LANGE: Muumuus. It was my aha moment. So I went back to Stephen, because I am 29 years old, not a fashion designer, didn't consider myself a fashion designer, didn't even think about the word entrepreneur. And I said to him, "I have an idea for turning around your business. Don't change anything about your clothing, but let's just add the word ‘maternity’ to your label."
ALINA CHO: And?
LIZ LANGE: He basically looked at me like I was smoking crack, like I had ten heads.
ALINA CHO: Wow.
LIZ LANGE: So crazily enough, without even realizing this was going to happen, I found myself unable to stop thinking about this idea, it was like one of those things where I’d wake up in the middle of the night, I'd grab a piece of paper, I’d like crudely sketch something, I don't sketch. I went into my closet, and I kept thinking like, "This would work. That would work."
ALINA CHO: I mean, that's crazy, Liz.
LIZ LANGE: It was weird. Then I just went to him one day, I was like, "I am so sorry, but I have to do this.”
Liz Lange Maternity, the early days
ALINA CHO: So, what happened?
LIZ LANGE: The quick of it is, I struck a nerve. It was the right idea at the right time.
ALINA CHO: Right.
LIZ LANGE: It was one person told one person, told one person and before I knew it, I was getting phone calls from all over the world. And they would literally say, "I want five in every color, in every style you make, I don't care." And then I started reaching out to celebrities. It started with Cindy Crawford, who was huge back then. She would tell Paulina Porizkova. And then, it would be like a Cate Blanchett going to an awards show.
ALINA CHO: It snowballed.
LIZ LANGE: It was crazy. When I sold my company 10 years later [for a reported $50 million], we were the largest maternity apparel brand in the United States.
FROM FEELING LOST… TO FINDING FIGUE
ALINA CHO: [After selling your company], you’ve said you felt a bit lost.
LIZ LANGE: Totally. I was used to walking on the street and having women scream out at me, like, "Oh my God, you saved my life when I was pregnant." You know, it was fun. And I was used to managing employees and running this business, it was kind-of all I knew.
ALINA CHO: And suddenly you weren't doing it.
LIZ LANGE: I wasn't worried about working. I just kind-of wanted to work.
ALINA CHO: You had time to give it some thought and, boom, [late last year], you announce that you are buying Figue.
The new Figue Resort Collection, by Liz Lange
LIZ LANGE: So, I had been a huge Figue fan. And then I had heard during the pandemic, through the grapevine, that [founder Stephanie Von Watzdorf] had kind-of just had it. And I know how debilitating and exhausting and demoralizing the fashion business can be. So, I completely got it.
ALINA CHO: Sure.
LIZ LANGE: But it was another aha moment where I was like, "Wait, I love that brand, I understand that brand, I understand that customer the way I understood the Liz Lange Maternity customer." Because back then that customer was me. Well, today the Figue customer is me. It’s me, it's my friends. That's where we are in our lives, that's the way we like to dress.
ALINA CHO: As your friend Simon Doonan says, "I've gone hiking with Liz and she wears a kaftan."
LIZ LANGE: I'm never not in a kaftan, I joke that I've entered my kaftan years.
ALINA CHO: Love it.
LIZ LANGE: [Three weeks ago], we delivered the beginning of Resort One, which is the first season that I was creative director. However, I feel like I'm still building it — I’m introducing knits, I’m introducing more separates.
The new Figue Resort Collection, by Liz Lange
ALINA CHO: You've been quoted as saying, "I finally fully feel like myself again professionally."
LIZ LANGE: I love it. Headaches and all, this feels like me again. Like I've come home again.
115K FOLLOWERS ON INSTAGRAM AND COUNTING
ALINA CHO: I am completely obsessed with your Instagram.
LIZ LANGE: I like Instagram a lot, [and] I didn't really want to post a bunch of selfies. It just wasn't me, no judgment there. So, I started posting things I found beautiful, things I found chic, and it really started that way.
ALINA CHO: But it caught on, Liz – it caught on.
LIZ LANGE: It caught on, exactly. I didn't expect that to happen, you know, I mean I'm 55 years old, I don't even understand how the algorithm on Instagram works and my kids think I'm a joke.
ALINA CHO: Well, you're a joke with 115,000 followers.
LIZ LANGE: And then I think the piece of it that's really working right now is that I started kind-of using the pictures just as a jumping off point.
ALINA CHO: Totally.
LIZ LANGE: I riff on them. I write about what I want to write about, and it often tangentially relates to the pictures, but sometimes barely and sometimes very directly.
ALINA CHO: I feel like it's also, in some cases, a history lesson. You just posted something about Jackie O's wedding dress.
LIZ LANGE: Yes, that's a Valentino dress.
ALINA CHO: But I didn't know the story behind it.
LIZ LANGE: I'm so flattered that I taught you something about fashion.
AND DO YOU KNOW WHO SHE’S RELATED TO? IT’S A PODCAST.
LIZ LANGE: I had been toying with the idea of writing a memoir. I kind-of knew I had an interesting, crazy story, that my close friends knew.
ALINA CHO: For people who don’t know about your family background, explain to me why this makes for a good story.
LIZ LANGE: In the '70s and '80s, my uncle was probably one of the most famous businessmen in America.
ALINA CHO: Saul Steinberg.
LIZ LANGE: At a time when there weren't as many business stars as there are today. People who were really, really rich, kind-of had brand names. And my uncle was extremely well known.
ALINA CHO: He was also brash and outgoing and threw fancy parties.
Saul Steinberg with wife, Gayfred Steinberg, Dance Theatre of Harlem, New York, NY
(Left to right) Deborah Norville, Saul Steinberg, Blaine Trump, Dance Theatre of Harlem Spring Gala, June 13, 1990
LIZ LANGE: Yes, he lived hugely big. He had many marriages. He lived a very public life. He was always in the newspaper. My mother says when she flew with my uncle to India at some point, when they landed, the newspapers all said, “Saul Steinberg visits India.”
ALINA CHO: Wow.
LIZ LANGE: And I guess the big news is my life took so many unexpected turns. In 2001, my family ended up losing all its money.
Literally losing all its money. It's something that if you would have asked me prior to that, would have been absolutely inconceivable.
ALINA CHO: Of course.
LIZ LANGE: My friend, Ariel Levy, who is a writer for the New Yorker, who is an incredible writer, has always wanted to help me with [a memoir]. Years ago, I told her about this game I used to play when I was younger. I pretended that we were the “just enough” family. We weren't rich, we weren't poor, it's almost like Goldilocks and the Three Bears and we were the middle bear. We had just enough. And she was like, "Oh my god, that's so brilliant, Freud couldn't have written it better.” Then she got this gig during the height of the pandemic to do a podcast for Sony.
ALINA CHO: So…
LIZ LANGE: So, I did what I thought was an episode. And, she came back to me and said, “There's so much here. This is so good. Sony and I want this to be the whole season, we'll just devote the whole season to it." I love the podcast, I'm happy I did it. But obviously, it's not easy. There are people in my family [who] aren't thrilled. It’s very candid, which I think people are responding to.
ALINA CHO: I can't wait to listen to it.
LIZ LANGE: You'll like it.
ALINA CHO: I can’t wait.