There is nothing more simple, or more versatile, than a line.
That’s the opinion of former Valerie Boster, fellow Vogue veteran Meredith Melling, and former rag & bone exec Molly Howard. “There’s endless potential for what it could be and mean,” Boster says.
The three women are co-founders of La Ligne (which literally means “the line” in French), a direct-to-consumer women’s clothing brand that debuted its online store Tuesday morning. The clothing, the designs for which will center around different variations of lines and stripes, will be available exclusively through the company’s website and through luxury retail partner Net-a-Porter.
Like fellow e-retailers Everlane and Cuyana, La Ligne promises high quality clothing at a lower-than-designer price, something it’s able to accomplish by cutting out the middleman (half of the clothes are made in New York City) and having no retail stores (for now).
Its major differentiator? “We’re very editorial in nature,” says Howard. In addition to selling clothes, La Ligne will provide shoppers with three different suggestions for what to wear with each item in its collection, as well as use its website as a platform for fashion-focused editorial content she explains.
The inspiration behind this “how to” concept is the founders themselves, each of whom are in a different life stage and thus have very different needs, says Melling. She herself is in her 40s with three children, Boster is in her 30s and just had her first child, while Howard is single and in her 20s. “There’s an ageless aspect to our designs.”
While normally, having three female founders can make fundraising extremely difficult (especially when two of the three are pregnant, which was the case at the time they were seeking investments) the nascent startup has already raised about $2 million in funding round involving friends and family, which closed in February. One brand’s biggest advantages? Fashion-world star power.
La Ligne counts among its advisors Kate Spade co-founder Andy Spade, Warby Parker co-founder Neil Blumenthal, Theory CEO Andrew Rosen, and rag & bone co-founder David Neville. The co-founders have also recruited fashion influencers like Leandra Medine, founder of the blog Man Repeller (which currently has 1.3 million Instagram followers) to model their debut collection.
“Everyone involved is friends of the brand,” says Howard.
