La Ligne, which is celebrating 10 years in business, has been growing its primarily direct-to-consumer business at a fast clip. The company is about to open its 10th store, in Montecito, Calif.; is launching an ad campaign with actress Connie Britton, and will introduce The Perfect 10, an anniversary capsule collection highlighting the brand’s signature wardrobe staples.
Founded by Molly Howard, Valerie Macaulay and Meredith Melling, the New York-based contemporary brand has developed a loyal following among stylists, editors and celebrities. Famous names such as Dakota Johnson, Jennifer Lawrence, Olivia Wilde, Meghan Markle, Selena Gomez, and Anne Hathaway are fans of their clothes.
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Both Macaulay and Melling are former Vogue editors, while Howard is the former head of business development at Rag & Bone. Together the three executives combined their talents into building La Ligne, which currently employs 50 people (including retail stores), and has its headquarters over two floors at 154 Grand Street in Manhattan. Howard serves as chief executive officer, Melling is chief brand officer, and Macaulay is chief creative officer.
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Known for its French-infused knitwear, La Ligne was built on the enduring power of the stripe. Three years ago, it launched a denim collection, which is doing very well.
“Business is going really well. Last year we had our best year, and November was the best month we ever had,” said Howard in a Zoom interview Monday with Melling and Macaulay. She attributed the strong year to opening its second New York City store in the West Village and a lot of “big, exciting collaborations. We became a big part of the street style going on,” she said.
Over the years La Ligne has done successful capsules with Lily Aldridge, Observed by Us (a 10-piece collection with Kirsten Dunst and Jessica Hershko), Dianna Agron, Birkenstock, Steve McQueen, and Away.
The brand will open its Montecito store in June, joining units on Madison Avenue and Bleecker Street in New York; Highland Park Village in Dallas; The Royal Poinciana in Palm Beach; Greenwich Avenue in Greenwich, Conn., Marin Country Mart in Larkspur, Calif.; Newbury Street in Boston; King Street in Charleston, and on 12 South in Nashville. Howard said they are thoughtful about testing new geographies and making sure they’re proven for them, before actually opening a store.
Howard said she’s interested in opening a store in Los Angeles (which is its second-biggest market online), as well as in Chicago, the Hamptons and Atlanta and additional ones in Florida and Texas. La Ligne’s sweet spot in square footage is around 1,200 square feet, but the Madison Avenue store is only 650 square feet. Howard believes that over the next 10 years the brand can support a total of 50 stores.
When they do open stores, one thing for them to consider is adjacencies, but they don’t necessarily think about similar brand adjacencies. “We like to fit into a woman’s day in the right way,” said Howard. She likes proximity to a great coffee shop, yoga studio or hair salon. Howard has also found that they do well when they’re adjacent to luxury brands. “When you walk from a luxury store into our store, you touch and feel and understand the quality and the fit and then the price point is a bit more digestible,” she said.
In addition to its own web site, lalignenyc.com — which Howard said is its largest retailer — the collection is sold through Net-a-porter, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. The brand does business with Neiman’s and Saks Fifth Avenue through drop shipping, so they weren’t as exposed to Saks Global’s payment problems, said Howard.
In 2023, La Ligne launched a denim collection and over the years has experimented with accessories categories via collaborations. “They’ve done really well for us. We obviously had a really successful Birkenstock collaboration at the end of last year, which sold out immediately,” said Howard.
The denim collection was launched because when they were shooting their knitwear, they were styling it back to other jeans brands in their closet, said Melling. “Instead of recommending Levi’s, we should be making our own,” she said. The partners feel that future categories could be footwear and jewelry. Long-term, Howard said they’ll be doing all the categories.
Turning to some of the challenges and high points over the past 10 years, Melling pointed to launching denim, which was challenging since they started developing it before COVID-19. “And then of course, no one was putting on jeans. Everyone was wearing a top with sweat pants or pajama bottoms to be on Zoom. And then when the world got back together, we had to reconsider our development partners, so that took a really long time. But it’s been an amazing success and a real highlight of the brand,” Melling said.
When they launched, they started with The Meredith (cropped flare), The Molly (straight leg) and The Valerie (skinny leg) to keep it tight. Now they’ve got a full range, from wide leg to barrel, said Melling.
The company employs a denim consultant but the internal team designs the jeans.
While the company doesn’t do a huge international business, they ship internationally from their website, and they do a “quite a big business with Net-a-porter, so in that regard, it’s pretty substantial,” said Howard. Eighty percent of their business is direct-to-consumer, and they try to keep wholesale at around 20 percent.
“Obviously it grows every year as the business does as a whole, but we’re not really aggressively trying to add any wholesale partners. We try to grow within our partnerships which are strong and feel really good,” said Howard.
Knowing what they know about running a business, would they do it all over again?
“I love that we’ve overcome every challenge, every obstacle, things we did and had no idea about and we found a solution, and I’m really proud of that,” said Melling.
In light of the challenging tariff situation, Howard said the company has diversified its factories and was able to adapt quickly last year and move production from one place to another. “It [our factories] looks really different now versus what it looked like five years ago,” said Howard.
She said they were able to anticipate the tariffs and prepare for them in a lot of ways. They did, however, have to raise some prices in some areas. “At the very minimum, everywhere had a 10 percent tariff at one point. So at the very least, our cost of goods was going up 10 percent, which has a huge impact on the bottom line,” said Howard.
She said the business is pretty much self-funded, and the last time they raised money was a small amount in the summer of 2018. She said they’re operating off of their profit, so when you add a minimum of a 10 percent increase, it has a huge impact.
For its 10th anniversary, La Ligne has developed a capsule distilling its most beloved categories — tailoring, shirting, knitwear, denim and everyday essentials, into an assortment of timeless pieces designed to form the foundation of a modern wardrobe.
The collection features the Perfect Suit, including the Perfect Suit Jacket ($395) and Perfect Suit Trouser ($325), offered in classic midnight and brown, alongside the relaxed Perfect Trouser in sand ($350). The capsule also spotlights elevated wardrobe staples such as The Perfect Shirt ($195) in white and blue, a striped statement version ($275), the Perfect Pant ($325) and The Perfect Robe ($395). There’s also the Perfect Shirt Dress with Slip ($495), a piece that embodies La Ligne’s signature approach to polished ease.
Rounding out the capsule are the Perfect 10 Tee, the Perfect Breton, the Perfect Track Pant, and the Perfect Jean. The Perfect Sweater is offered in ivory, navy, and ivory/navy stripe. Sizes go from XS to XL.
“it’s a literal collaboration with ourselves to celebrate 10 years,” said Howard.
To bring the collection to life, La Ligne has signed on actress and producer Connie Britton, who was photographed in Los Angeles by Zoey Grossman and styled by Alex Harrington. According to the company, Britton has used her voice on issues that matter and embodies everything La Ligne’s Perfect 10 stands for.
Britton is known for her TV roles in “Friday Night Lights,” “Nashville,” “American Horror Story,” and “The White Lotus,” as well as such films “The Brothers McMullen” and “Bombshell.”
The collection launches Tuesday and will be available at lalignenyc.com and La Ligne retail locations.