When Liz Claiborne's death was announced last week, it was like losing a friend. I wonder how many women all around the world felt that way.

I had dinner with two friends a few hours after I had read that the fashion icon had passed away.

"Did you hear Liz Claiborne died?" I asked. The two women both literally dropped their barbecued ribs and looked at me, startled.

	Liz Claiborne in 1949. Click photo for larger image.

"Oh, no," they almost said in unison. There was a pall in our otherwise jovial conversation. We all knew who she was, even if we didn't know her personally.

To most of us she was just Liz.

"Oh, is that Liz?" someone would ask if they admired a skirt, a sweater or a blouse, or other sportswear separate. She was not in the couture market, but we knew her first name as well as Calvin, Oscar, Donna and Ralph.

But she was more like us. She and I were almost the same age in fact; she was 78 and I'm hitting that mark in a few months.

For some time Liz Claiborne stood alone. She recognized a gap in the Seventh Avenue offerings. She filled it -- did she ever.

I met her only once, a few years before anyone would recognize her name. In fact, I remember not knowing who I would be talking to when I headed for Saks Fifth Avenue, when it was on the sixth floor of the Gimbels building. I would guess the time to be early '70s, possibly earlier.

She was at Saks representing Youth Guild, a division of Jonathan Logan, which was a junior clothing manufacturer. She started with them in 1960 and stayed there for 15 years.

Our interview was very nice as I recall, but no rockets went off. I did like the blouses she was doing as the Youth Guild Designer. She had a great wide smile and coal black hair. I don't recall if she wore the oversized, dark-rimmed glasses that became her trademark in later years, much like the late fashion editor Carrie Donovan and current Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Designer names weren't known as well as the manufacturer names back then, and I think I soon forgot hers -- but it wouldn't be for long. Suddenly we began to hear about Liz Claiborne's small collection hitting the market. For fall of 1976 she just had 35 pieces that could be mixed and matched and ranged in price from $36 to $80.

Elaine Woo of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "She described the pants, knickers, ponchos, cowl-neck sweaters and jackets as business-like but not too pinstripe; more casual, more imaginative, less uptight."

She was a working woman. She knew there was a major gap in the market. She was so right. Whether they could afford full price or waited for sales, women wanted Liz Claiborne. I like to think she lifted our wardrobes above ordinary, and for a very good price.

While I never went looking specifically for a Claiborne piece, I have realized that over the past 30 years my closet has been full of them. So has my sweater drawer. I have seen something I like instinctively, and more often than not I then look at the label to find our friend Liz.

I learned from Ms. Woo's tribute that the designer almost always wore pants to the office, and on rare occasions when she showed up in a skirt, her staff applauded.

I want to applaud Liz Claiborne. She changed many women's lives and gave us sorely needed pizzazz and all-around neat looks for the work place.

She was the first to give us style we could live with -- and can still live with all these years later.