Donald J Pliner & Lisa F Pliner - Fashion Footwear Legends

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.