Figue Rebrands With a Focus on Becoming a 12-month-a-year Brand
Figue is not just bold prints and caftans anymore.
The New York-based luxury women’s label, which was acquired by entrepreneur Liz Lange in January 2021, is undergoing a rebranding to evolve the resortwear label into a 12-month-a-year brand.
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Lange, chief executive officer and creative director, acquired the brand from Stephanie Von Watzdorf, who founded Figue in 2012 and decided to shut down the label as a result of the pandemic.
Lange is best known as the founder of the successful maternity brand Liz Lange Maternity (including Liz Lange for Swoosh Maternity Athletic Apparel and Liz Lange Maternity for Target), and non-maternity brand Completely Me by Liz Lange for the Home Shopping Network. She also launched the fast-fashion online brand Navy Days in 2018 and became an investor in many consumer brands such as Harper Wilde, Bulletin, Twice, Tiny Organics, Hint Water, Core Nutrition, Carbon 38 and PictureStart.
Fast forward to today, and Lange is now pouring all her energy into Figue, a brand she personally relates to, even before she bought the company.
“The loving of the brand came before the acquiring of the brand,” said Lange, adding that she took a line from Victor Kiam in the 1979 Remington razors’ ad, who said, “I liked the shavers so much, I bought the company.”
“Figue was my go-to. Everything I owned and loved, no matter where I was going, walking in Palm Beach, entertaining at home, going to dinners and going to dressy events. It was always Figue,” said Lange. “The one thing that wasn’t Figue was when I was in New York City meeting a friend for lunch, and that’s the thing that’s going to change. I felt there was enough in the DNA of Figue that I could get there. I could see that the thing I loved so much in a resort brand, I could change into a 12-month-a-year brand. It’s not just a beach brand, but a city brand too,” said Lange, who has homes in Manhattan; Palm Beach, Fla.; and East Hampton, N.Y. (she is the current owner of Grey Gardens).
One of Lange’s first rebranding moves was changing the logo and color, making it burnt red on a clean background. The prior logo had a serpent and the word Figue. More importantly, the brand is moving away from a resortwear brand that didn’t always ship a fall line.
“Sure we have caftans — I think we have the best caftans in the business — but we also have an enormous amount of separates and a very large bottoms and tops business. We have knits for the first time,” said Lange.
Needless to say, the brand doesn’t plan to throw away its “more is more vibe,” where it will take a print and embellish the print and embroider on top of it. “But we’re widening the lens, so you’ll also find our bestselling shapes in solids, and you’ll also find them as tonal,” said Lange.
“Not everything is a bold print with embroidery and tassels and pom poms,” she added. “I think that was a moment for Figue and a really great moment, and I think it put that whole look on the map. But as I see us evolving, and trends come and go, I feel we’re entering a period of ‘quiet luxury.’ How does Figue do quiet luxury? I would call it wearable luxury or quiet elegance. That’s where I’m trying to take the collection,” said Lange.
Figue’s wholesale partners are retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Shopbop and Saks Fifth Avenue.
Lange isn’t looking to change the customer base, but rather broaden its reach. “Everything we’re talking about in my mind is to widen the appeal. If you weren’t into this oversized big bold prints with pom poms and tassels, then you weren’t a Figue customer, and it just didn’t really work for you. But today, I think a lot of people who didn’t think they could be Figue customers or said, ‘I just don’t wear prints,’ or ‘I don’t wear long,’ well, we do every length. We do solids, we do quieter prints, our knits are fairly clean,” she said. Lange said she likes the juxtaposition of wearing loud and bold together with clean.
Nowadays, Figue’s sweet spot is 40 years old and above, but its new assortment appeals to a younger customer who’s shopping at Shopbop, for example.
She said every item they have, depending on how you accessorize it, can go anywhere. For example, sometimes Lange will wear a beaded caftan with flip-flops to run around town, or will put on big earrings and strappy sandals and wear the same caftan to a black-tie, a bar mitzvah in the city, a benefit at Palm Beach, or entertaining at home.
“When I thought about acquiring a brand, Figue just spoke to me because of that. It was 2020, height of COVID[-19], all of a sudden I found myself living in different places….the thing that we’re probably the least is ‘classic wear to work.’ But having said that, we just introduced blazers,” she said.
“We’re definitely event, running around daytime, we’re always resort weather, we’re cities and resort communities. We’re day and we’re night. My goal is to say our dresses can be from pool to party,” said Lange. She said they manufacture primarily in India, with some production in the U.S., South America and China.
Unquestionably, Figue’s biggest category is dresses, followed by tops and bottoms. Knitwear is the smallest percentage. She said the brand always repeats bestsellers, but every season it’s 20 percent repeat, 80 percent new bodies. “We absolutely have our tried and true bestsellers,” she said. When it comes to bottoms, it was all about skirts and Figue historically had one pant style. Now it has eight or nine pants styles.
Turning to growth opportunities, Lange said she’d like to add more categories such as tabletop, which the brand has dabbled in, taking some of its textiles and making tablecloths, placemats and napkins. “I’m always entertaining at home and I’m always going to my friends’ houses for dinners. I sort of lost my taste for restaurants. I’m very interested at this time of my life in table settings,” said Lange. She would like to put the company’s prints and patterns on plates, stemware, glassware, napkins and napkin rings.
Although she doesn’t want to be known as a resortwear brand, she’d like to put the brand’s prints and patterns on swimsuits and coverups, and hopes to do that as a collaboration.
“I really want to grow our knitwear category. I want to do a line of big, bold fun costume jewelry,” she added. She said the brand has already started to do belts and handbags. “Accessories are very important. When I think about accessories, I think about belts, I think about sunglasses, bags. Shoes are probably the lowest priority because I think it’s a hard business.” She’d also like to do denim and could see doing it as a collaboration as well.
For her knitwear, she’s doing a combination of clean classics that merchandise back to the busier wovens. She also does very “Figue knits” which are special with lots of embroidery and prints. “We’re taking classic shapes like a twinset, and taking the print from our wovens, and putting them into the classic shapes of our knitwear,” said Lange.
“When I acquired the brand, there was so much to do, and I really wanted to focus first on the ready-to-wear. So that’s where you’ll see the changes,” she said.
Lange, who is sole owner of the company, heads a small design team. “Fittings, design and press are where I spend all my time.” She has a president and controller who handles finances. The company employs 11 people who are based at 530 Seventh Avenue, which it moved into eight months ago.
Lange said opening retail stores isn’t a high priority for Figue. Growing the wholesale business is, both domestically and internationally. She said the brand is planning to go to Paris this February and break into the European and Middle East market. She said the brand will probably go into an existing multihigh-end showroom.
Right now the business is evenly divided between e-commerce and wholesale. “E-commerce was a huge initiative of mine when I bought the brand. It was a very small part of the business when I got it. The website itself was barely shopable. We completely redesigned the website so that in my mind, it’s as shopable as any website that any woman who likes to shop is on.” Her first hire was someone to run that business.
Lange also started to do a printed catalog, which the company mails to its customers four times a year. “That’s been so successful for us that we’re planning to increase that as well,” she said. She thinks the catalogs can be done six times a year. She said the company has a lot of deliveries within each season. “It’s such a huge sales driver for us,” said Lange. The catalog is photographed in cities such as New York, Palm Beach and Miami — “whatever the mood of the season is,” she said.
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