Irene Albright, a real fashion industry maverick and leader, founded the Albright Fashion Library in 1990. With a tagline of Luxury For Hire, this fabulous rental facility has locations in both LA and New York City, on Cooper Square near NoHo. It’s considered a one-stop shop because clients can rent entire designer outfits including shoes, bag and jewelry for a week-long rental fee of $1,500.

The inventory includes a full range of designers, sizes and seasons, plus wedding. It’s a library in terms of the vastness of the collection, but not the business model since the items are rented. The process begins with a $250 appt fee.

Garments from the library have appeared in many tv shows, including Sex and the City, back in the day, and more recently, Saturday Night Live. The Jenner girls have worn several dresses over the years. An identical version of the showstopping green Versace dress, worn by Jennifer Lopez at the 2000 Grammy’s, is in the collection too. If it fits, you can have it for a week!

You can see the 60,000 item collection online at AlbrightNYC.com and AlbrightLA.com, just click on the Collection tab to see and reserve items. There are full descriptions of the current and vintage pieces, along with those by emerging designers that Irene’s keen eye noticed and her generous spirit endorses and promotes when stylists come knocking.

About 50% of the items are photographed on models and the items are organized by year, price, designer (every big one is in there), season (broken into cruise, resort, fall, pre-fall and spring summer), type of item (a bag, boot or belt, for example) but not size.

Some of the celebrities who have been clients include Ariana Grande, Maria Carey, Megan Fox, Lady Gaga, Kristen Bell, Selena Gomez, Angelina Jolie and Tracee Ellis Ross.

It’s truly a museum quality collection, and one day, as Irene hinted, some of the pieces may wind up in a museum, too. But presently, her fans say that it’s not just a business. It’s a home for people who adore fashion.

This episode explores the work and world of Donald J Pliner, a true fashion icon who built his eponymous footwear brand and ran it for 35 years. He’s joined by his wife and creative partner Lisa F Pliner who has deep roots in fashion and wrapped her innovative visions around many of Donald’s products.

The occasion for our conversation is the recent release of a book the captures the history of the Pliners’ fashion journey. Titled DONALD J PLINER: The Selling of One’s Sole, the book chronicles Donald’s rags to riches life story. It’s a tale of entrepreneurship, imagination, good ideas, some bad decisions, legal turmoil, health setbacks, pop culture and love. I’d sat it’s as inspirational as it is cautionary.

The book emphasizes two major themes – Donald’s bottomless pool of creative talent and energy, along with the endless support of Lisa who is an artist, model, muse and noted shoe designer in her own right. I own a pair of heels she created with neat rock studs and I love them! She studied at the renowned Parsons School of Design in Paris, France. Then she returned to the US to work with fashion legend Gianni Versace as he launched his career in S. Beach. She met Donald in 1997 and they’ve been together ever since then, collaborating on everything.

Donald likes to say that “When the feet are comfortable, so are the mind, body and soul.”

He is rare in many ways since he designed shoes and clothes for both men and women. He also created interior furnishings, and owned some incredible real estate around the country, including a very glamorous house on Star Island in South Beach.

In 2025, Donald was inducted into the prestigious Fashion Hall of Fame at Kent State University’s School of Fashion.

One last chunk of biographical history…Donald grew up in the shoe business. His father, an immigrant from what is now Poland, was the proprietor of a chain of fashion footwear stores on the south side of Chicago. As a child, Donald spent time in the stores and eventually worked as a salesperson. With entrepreneurship scribbled all over his childhood, he later opened his own emporium on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills in the 1980s. In 2011, after a long and successful run, he sold his Donald J Pliner shoe brand to a private equity firm.

Like any business, fashion can be harsh. Donald is a survivor.

Darnell Lisby is the Cleveland Museum of Art’s first curator of fashion. His latest claim to fame is creating the blockbuster exhibition “Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses” which ran between 2025-26.

Darnell professional background includes serving as a fashion historian and education coordinator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum where he was the sole fashion historian on the curatorial team for the Willi Smith: Street Couture exhibition. He also served in this capacity at various New York City spaces including the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Other credits: The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion and curated the exhibitions Egyptomania: Fashion’s Conflicted Obsession and Korean Couture: Generations of Revolution.

Broadly speaking, he says he enjoys examining the intersection of Blackness and the history of fashion from the 1800’s to the present.