About Linden & Lane

Hi, I'm Eleanor.

I grew up on Linden Lane, in a town just outside Hartford. My mother took me to the dressmaker on Elm Street when I was twelve, for a navy dress I still remember. That's where this started.

Eleanor outside the Linden & Lane boutique storefront in Connecticut.
Eleanor outside the studio, Connecticut

How it began

Linden & Lane opened in 2011, in a small storefront in Litchfield, Connecticut. After my kids left for college, I needed something of my own. I'd just come back from a summer on the Amalfi coast with my husband, and the way the women dressed there had stayed with me for weeks. So I started with a small rack of dresses cut for that mood. Pieces I couldn't find anywhere else in town. Other women kept asking about them. Within a year, the storefront became a studio. Within three, it became the way I'd spent the last fifteen years.

What I look for

Italian summer dressing has a specific quality. The cuts are flattering without being tight. The fabrics breathe. The prints are bold but never loud. The women who wear these clothes don't look like they're trying. They look like themselves at their best.

I buy what I'd want to wear myself. Dresses that flow at fifty and don't have to be tugged at by sixty. Sets that work for a wedding in June and a Sunday dinner in October. Sandals that get you through eight hours on cobblestone without complaining.

Everything in the studio passes the same test: would I pack this for a trip to Capri? If not, it doesn't make the rack.

Eleanor reading in her studio.
A quiet morning in the studio

July 2026

Why I'm moving

My husband was Italian. We honeymooned in Sorrento and went back to the same house every August for thirty years. He died a few years ago. I kept renting the house. The kids are grown. There isn't a reason left to wait.

This July, I'm closing the American studio and going back. The Italian studio opens in the fall as something new. Same eye for the pieces. Closer to the aesthetic. I'll be writing from there.

Eleanor's signature

The farewell collection

Before I go, everything in the American studio is on the website. Once they're gone, they're gone. If you've shopped with us before, thank you. If this is your first visit, welcome.

— Eleanor

See what's left in the studio