PHOTOGRAPH BY LOUIS TUCKER / COURTESY DE NOVO COATS
Fashion designer Elizabeth Holliday is wearing one of her creations — a De Novo merino wool coat in sandstone.
When you pull on your favorite wool coat this fall, will you admire how it caresses your shoulders or hugs your waist? Designer Elizabeth Holliday considers those details each time she begins to sketch a new jacket.
Holliday is a rare commodity in Memphis, a locally based fashion designer who specializes in outerwear, creating a sophisticated line of raincoats, blazers, and jackets under her company name, De Novo. She launched her business in the early 2000s with a sleek, single-closure jacket that remains a best-seller. While Holliday originally targeted wholesalers, she eventually found her niche selling directly to women at curated art shows in Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. Locally, she participates in the River Arts Festival each October.
“People who travel abroad tell me my work has a European feel. But I’m not trying to follow trends. I just do what I like — what gives me the feels.” — Elizabeth Holliday
Her aim is to create a garment that is stylish while enhancing each woman’s shape. Take for example, a recent customer who, though a size 6, stood 5’11” with broad shoulders. “I looked at her and took measurements and just knew what I needed to do,” Holliday says. “My clients are so excited to get something that works for them, especially if they enjoy wearing tailored clothes.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY LOUIS TUCKER / COURTESY DE NOVO COATS
The Arch Raincoat (shown here in poppy) is Japanese nylon.
Holliday’s studio is tucked upstairs in her Midtown home, a spacious, light-filled room lined floor to ceiling with racks of coats and bolts of nubby fabrics. She favors a mix of soft alpaca and merino wools from Italy and waterproof fabrics made in Canada. Entrepreneurship runs in the family. Her mother and sister operated beauty salons and her grandmother sewed from home.
“My grandma would take my mom and her sister to the department store and have them point out the dresses they liked. Then she’d go home, pull out a store-bought pattern and make the changes on her newspaper pattern,” thus creating stylish frocks at a fraction of the cost. Her grandmother’s inventiveness served as Holliday’s inspiration. By way of example, she brings out a dress she still treasures, an elegant, salmon-colored taffeta gown her grandmother made for her prom. It is stunning.
While her own mother didn’t sew often, she taught her daughter the basics. “The first thing I made was a coat for my chihuahua, Barney,” says Holliday. “It was blue polyester with buttons down the back and a hat with holes for his ears.”
That introduction led to a lifelong passion.
Honing Her Craft
PHOTOGRAPH BY LOUIS TUCKER / COURTESY DE NOVO COATS
The Coach Raincoat (shown here in Kelly green) is Japanese nylon.
Originally from Hickory, North Carolina, Holliday earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, and continued to sew in her dorm room because, she says, “I always wanted clothes nobody else had.” She eventually began crafting with a woman who’d studied fashion design in Paris. It was she who suggested Holliday get formal training.
So, at age 23, Holliday moved to northern California to study at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in San Francisco. After completing a two-year program, she landed her very first job interview, producing knit sportswear for Bay Area designer Rebecca Bruce.
For eight years, she worked for Bruce, learning what it takes to run a business and succeed in the fiercely competitive fashion world. “I knew I wanted to create my own line so my boss let me take the reins.” Soon Holliday was selling her jackets alongside Bruce’s sportswear at a boutique in Mill Valley.
During that time, Holliday also met her husband, Brad Schmiedicke, eventually marrying and starting a family (they have two teenage boys) while she launched her outerwear company. In 2007, the couple returned to Memphis, Brad’s hometown, where he joined LRK. He is now a senior architect with A2H.
The Creative Process
PHOTOGRAPH BY LOUIS TUCKER / COURTESY DE NOVO COATS
The Cowl Neck Coat (shown here in nutmeg) is alpaca wool. Prices for all coats range from $500 to $1,000.
Now 52, designing and pattern-making remain Holliday’s true passions. For inspiration, she pages through trade magazines that showcase the latest styles from world designers and lets ideas percolate before creating a new design. Once she draws a pattern, the fabric is selected and laid out on a huge rectangular table for cutting. The pieces are then pinned onto a dress form for fit. Once a coat pattern is finalized, she sends it electronically to Los Angeles where seamstresses help with the assembly work.
“People who travel abroad tell me my work has a European feel. But I’m not trying to follow trends. I just do what I like,” she says, “what gives me the feels.”
At art shows, women who own De Novo coats frequently stop by her booth to pay Holliday the ultimate compliment, telling her how much they enjoy wearing her creations. “And that makes me really happy.”
Holliday used 2020 to reset, taking a virtual business class on efficiency and hiring a marketing specialist to manage her social media streams. Her business goal for 2021 is simple: Sell 400 coats and grow. “I want this to work because I love doing design so much, I can’t fathom doing anything else,” she says. “It isn’t easy. Perseverance is the reason I have succeeded.”
More information: denovocoats.com
Elizabeth Holliday’s Three Things
Inspiration: Gap Express, a trade magazine featuring designers’ latest fashions
Favorite designer: Victoria Beckham. “She gets the woman’s body.”
Recharge: “I love spending time in nature; staring at a body of water restores me.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY LOUIS TUCKER / COURTESY DE NOVO COATS
photographs by louis tucker / courtesy de novo coats
