T H E P O W E R L I S T
W O M E N I N F A S H I O N
5. Angela Ahrendts
Keeping Claiborne Contemporary
After graduating from Indiana's Ball State University in 1981,
Angela Ahrendts could not leave campus fast enough. It wasn't
that she disliked Indiana, but for years she had known exactly
what she wanted to do. "I always dreamed about getting into the
fashion industry," she says. "So I graduated on a Friday, and on
Saturday I was on a plane to New York." With similar speed and
purpose, Ahrendts, 43, has ascended fashion's corporate ranks,
serving as president of the Donna Karan Collection, vice
president of Henri Bendel and currently as an executive vice
president at Liz Claiborne Inc.
Ahrendts considered being a designer, but when she got to college
she realized that other students possessed more raw talent. She
excelled in recognizing good designs and figuring out which ones
could be sold to which stores and at what price. This is not
unlike her role at Claiborne, which runs 32 clothing and
accessory brands—including Dana Buchman, Ellen Tracy, Kenneth
Cole New York, Mexx, Monet and recent acquisition Juicy
Couture—and had sales of $3.2 billion in the first three
quarters of 2003. Ahrendts manages a good portion of the women's
labels and all of the men's. She may lack the profile of a
superstar designer or a CEO, but her decisions directly affect
what consumers see in stores ranging from Kohls to Neiman Marcus.
