Since then, splurging on Lane's custom-made creations has become a Hollywood hallmark. In January, Courteney Cox Arquette wore a black velvet Lane gown trimmed with gold organza to the Golden Globes, while last August Madonna bought a Chinese hand-embroidered tapestry skirt by Lane to wear to her birthday party in L.A. "Libbie is the classiest version of California's sunshinier side of fashion," says Vogue senior market editor Deda Coben. "Her designs are what a woman wants, not just what length is in style or what sleeves are in style."
That's the idea. "If someone comes into my store and says, 'I want to look like a princess,' I say, 'Absolutely!' " says Lane, whose mostly one-of-a-kind designs cost slightly less than a king's ransom. Prices range from $300 for an organza skirt to $2,500 for a long evening coat. She sells them out of the Burton Way bungalow turned boutique that she opened seven months ago and where the New Age ambience— scented candles, voluptuous floral arrangements—is a draw in itself. "When you go to her store you walk into this world that you never want to leave," says Coben. "It's like a spa appointment for clothes."
The second oldest of six children, and the only girl, born to Maurice Aroff, a Los Angeles architect who died in 1980, and his wife, Joy, a fashion designer (they divorced when Lane was 14), Lane stylishly threaded her way through childhood. "She was always obsessed with clothes, and she always had decided ideas of her own," says Joy, 70. "I knew when she was very young that she was an artist." So did Lane, who turned kid brother Patrick into a living doll, dressing him up in her and their mother's clothes. Now 37 and a creative director for a Santa Monica ad agency, Patrick says, laughing, "It was ridiculous. [But] I was only 3 or 4, so I couldn't object."
After attending Beverly Hills High School, Lane enrolled at UCLA to study textile design but left after less than a year to take a job designing custom area rugs. She tried her hand as a textile artist, stylist and costume designer before taking up oil painting in 1989. "People wanted to buy my paintings," she says. "But it took me so long to make them, I never [wanted to] sell any of them." Eventually she combined her passion for painting with clothes design. "I was tired of seeing a sea of black every time I went into a store," she says. "I've always loved color and interesting details, so that's what I wanted to do."
For inspiration she has merely to close her eyes. "My designs are just fantasies where I dream that I could have this or that," says Lane. Her flights of fancy appealed to Andrew Lane, the writer-producer (Valley Girl) she met on a blind date in 1988. "It was her style that caught my attention," says Andrew, 46. "She just had a great way of looking and being that showed depth." Not surprisingly, for her 1989 wedding the bride wore a Libbie Lane white, ballet length velvet and lace original.
Now the mother of Alec, 5, and Ella, 14 months, Lane puts in four days a week at her shop, where she and three assistants concoct her styles in a back sewing room. In addition to weekly excursions to antique shops and flea markets in search of vintage fabrics, Lane oversees art projects with her family at their two-story Beverly Hills home. But turning workshop wishes into reality is essential to her happiness. "What if you could just say, 'I want it,' and you could have it," she says. "Every day all the dreams and fantasies I have come true."
Jeremy Helligar
Ulrica Wihlborg in Beverly Hills
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- Ulrica Wihlborg.
