A.L.C.

When celebrity stylist Andrea Lieberman resolved to design her own line of clothes, one of her inspirations was client and friend Shirley Manson, the lead singer of Garbage. "She's just effortlessly cool and a little punk rock," says Lieberman in her downtown Los Angeles studio, home base for A.L.C., her new collection of T-shirts, jersey dresses, trousers, and cardigans, which hit Barneys, Fred Segal, and Harvey Nichols in February. Scotswoman Manson, her signature flaming red hair teased out, is modeling one of A.L.C.'s navy-and-white striped maxidresses that makes her look, as Lieberman describes it, like a "demented doll." "It's so about the lady in the dress, the personality in the clothes," says Lieberman, who had a hand in such iconic fashion moments as Jennifer Lopez's plunging sheer green Versace dress at the 2000 Grammys and Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Girl look for the 2004 music video "What You Waiting For?" As Manson squeezes into a pair of A.L.C. skinny jean-like pants, Lieberman looks on approvingly. "Shirley's just so supercool. You can't ever put her in a box," she says. "You're mad, Andrea," Manson responds, a little chagrined by the attention. "But who doesn't want to be Andrea's muse?" The two met at a trunk show in 2006, and Manson, who currently stars as a killing machine in Chanel heels on Fox's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, will likely be the first of many celebs sporting Lieberman's clothes on the red carpet. At the Scottish Style Awards last fall, she wore one of Lieberman's black Waterman dresses with bell sleeves. "I was nominated for Scottish Stylish Bitch," she jokes. (She was actually crowned Most Stylish Female.) "People thought my dress was effortless and fabulous." It's also relatively inexpensive. (Cotton knits start at $120, skirts and trousers at $345, and dresses at $195.) "If you need a dress for dinner, it shouldn't cost you $3,000," Lieberman maintains. Though she's influenced by designers like Madame Gres and Azzedine Alaia, Lieberman was mainly inspired by the ease of American fashion. As a teenager, she studied design at Parsons and was motivated to start her own collection after 10 years of chasing musicians and celebrities around the globe.