Livening Up Liz

For a woman who’s worked at companies such as Rollerblade and Nike that epitomized American-casual-cool in the late eighties and nineties, Anne Cashill’s move to Liz Claiborne as vice president of design and merchandising might seem odd. After all, the Claiborne brand had, according to industry chatter, lost its edge.

“I wasn’t necessarily excited about Liz Claiborne, the brand,” says Mendota Heights–born and MCAD–educated Cashill, “but I really wanted a new challenge. I wanted the opportunity to interface with many different businesses. Liz had just purchased Lucky Brand Jeans and Laundry and was aggressively purchasing other apparel brands in hopes of expanding their reach. This was my opportunity to broaden my scope.”

This wasn’t the first time Cashill had chosen to challenge herself with a position at a company that was less than hip. Long before Target made Isaac Mizrahi, Proenza Schouler, and Behnaz Sarafpour household names, she worked as a design manager for the retailer. For six years, she brought to the floor the unified trend messages that Target is now famous for.

“When I started at Target, there were no cohesive messages and no trend statements. But Luis Padilla (then senior vice president of softlines merchandising) had a philosophical idea of wanting women’s wear to be as trend-right as the department store.”

Soon after Cashill came on board, Padilla’s team resurrected Cherokee by turning the focus on how real women dressed—piece by piece, mix and match—putting together Target’s first women’s wear brand statement with a harmonized color palette and coordinating basics. “The Target customer is college educated, white-collar, with a higher household income than other mass retailers, and the second we put a style story on the floor, there was immense positive response. Cherokee was the starting point for what Target is today.”

When the Liz Claiborne opportunity presented itself, Cashill saw it as a chance to move to a retailer that had long been respected in women’s wear but had just lost some of its edge. And, like Target, Claiborne was eager to hitch a ride on the fast fashion expressway; by purchasing such brands as Kate Spade, Juicy Couture, Lucky Jeans, DKNY Jeans, and Mac & Jac. Cashill is an internal consultant who interfaces with Claiborne’s growing arsenal of brands. “All of the different brands have their own designers, my team acts as advising specialists. Each season we create a trend book outlining the design direction for the year ahead.” 

In her seven years with Claiborne, she’s been instrumental in brokering deals between the fashion-forward lines, as well as with designer Narciso Rodriquez and most recently Claiborne’s new creative director Tim Gunn.

When she’s not changing the fashion world, Cashill splits her time between a West Village apartment and a home near Lake Harriet that she shares with her husband, Jose Vido. When asked if all the traveling takes its toll, she smiles and says, “No, I’m used to it. It gives me time to read Women’s Wear Daily and catch up on my e-mail.” We can’t help but wonder what this influential fashion insider will do next.