Lizalde

Before Ricky Lizalde designed lingerie, his artistic outlet was as a dancer performing with modern dance companies such as Complexions in New York and the Los Angeles Chamber Ballet.

Dance has had an influence on Lizalde’s lingerie designs. He combines the classically refined look of ballet costumes and the free-flowing shapes of modern-dance costumes with the same seamless grace he used in performing his dances.

“Lingerie and ballet costumes are so synonymous,” said Lizalde, who also designed costumes for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. “The fabrics are flowy. There are tulles. You just add lace to these beautiful ethereal garments, and you could come up with [beautiful lingerie.]”

After nearly a decade working as an assistant designer at companies such as The Warnaco Group Inc. and currently as vice president of design in the luxury division of Komar Co. in New York, Lizalde launched his own line, Lizalde, for Spring 2006. It pairs a romantically vintage character with a modern silhouette.

“It’s modern vintage,” said Lizalde of his luxurious designs. “It’s old meets new. I want every garment to be timeless.”

any women wear cotton camisoles and slinky slips as outerwear. Lizalde said he has seen some women wear the lace bed coats from his Spring collection out and about as clothing. But his long, silk charmeuse nightgowns and lace-trimmed silk jersey slips are decidedly sleepwear. A lavender silk knit one-piece teddy with pin-tuck detail and dainty buttons down the center restores the sexy secrecy of lingerie by mirroring vintage underpinnings.

“It’s everything that I miss in lingerie,” Lizalde said. “There are so many things that I think are so beautiful about lingerie that are even more pretty than regular clothing. There needs to be a return to that in some way.”

Victoria Roberts, owner of Zovo, a specialty store in Seattle, bought Lizalde’s debut line because she thought his Victorian-esque vintage style was truly unique.

“A lot of the other designs that we’re getting in are really beautiful and modern,” said Roberts, who stocks lingerie by Chantelle, Leigh Bantivoglio, Samantha Chang, Christine Vancouver and Aubade, among others. “I really feel like [Lizalde is different] because it’s the period that no one else has really captured as beautifully. [It] looked like it walked out of a Hollywood picture.”

Lizalde is also sold at Saks Fifth Avenue. Wholesale price points run $32 for a silk charmeuse tap pant, $84 for a silk jersey slip and $155 for a silk velvet robe.

Though Lizalde is now based in New York, the designer spent his childhood among six brothers and seven sisters in Escondido, Calif. He studied costume design at California State University, Long Beach. His first sewing lessons were given by his mother, who worked as a seamstress in the garment district of downtown Los Angeles.

“Every time I go to work and I come home, I feel like I am living some sort of American dream,” said Lizalde, whose parents were working-class Mexican immigrants. “I am very blessed. I’m very happy, and I love what I do. I love everything about it.”

For more information, visit the Kris Mesner Showroom in the California Market Center, suite A1033, or call (213) 623-7890.—Rhea Cortado