Time for Reflection
● The designer plans to launch his first fragrance, called Elie Tahari, in April.
Elie Tahari looks back on 45 years in business.
Elie Tahari’s path over the past 45 years hasn’t always been a smooth one, but he has managed to persevere in the rough-and-tumble world of fashion. What started with tube tops selling for $2 a piece has grown into a fashion company whose collection and licensed products are expected to generate $1 billion in retail volume this year.
As the brand gets ready to present its fall 2019 collection at Spring Studios on Thursday, (which will be live-streamed on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook Live and include runway appearances by Christie Brinkley and her daughter Sailor), Tahari spent time last week — amidst a model call — reflecting on his 45th anniversary and what the future holds.
The company has survived in what’s become a very challenged and fractured sportswear industry, while many of its competitors over the past 45 years have disappeared or changed hands. The fact that Tahari, at 67 years old, still owns his own collection business, and remains passionate about it, is a testament to his grit and can-do spirit.
Tahari’s upbringing was far from ordinary. His parents left their native Iran for Jerusalem, where Tahari was born, and he spent part of his life in an Israeli orphanage after his parents divorced and his mother had epilepsy. In 1971, when he was 19 years old, he came to the U.S. by himself. “I came to visit and I never left,” said Tahari in an interview in his showroom at 510 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He said his brother was a messenger for El Al Israel Airlines and got a free ticket, which said “A. Tahari.”
“I changed it and wrote E. Tahari [on the carbon copy]. It was a standby ticket to New York and back. I came for a few days, had $100, and ran out of money. I never wanted to leave,” said the designer.
Tahari slept outside a few nights and then went to a shelter on St. Mark’s Place in Greenwich Village, where hippies congregated, and that’s how he learned about fashion. The shelter gave him a day job as an assistant to an electrician, who serviced the garment center. At night, he worked in a clothing boutique in Greenwich Village called Fig Leaf selling clothes. The boutique owner, Howard Levy, had a manufacturing company called Cactus and would come to the store and ask the salespeople what styles the customers wanted.
“I used to give him ideas and he took me under his wing to the manufacturing side,” said Tahari. “Then I came up with the tube top.”
Inspired by the Seventies’ club culture, and the propensity of many young women to go braless, he found bandeaulike, printed Indian gauze fabric tubes in a New York store owned by Murray Kleid, bought up the stock and had elastic sewn into the pieces. They became a discoready sensation.
Tahari then opened Elie’s Boutique on 53rd Street, between Second and Third avenues. He sold merchandise manufactured by Cactus, along with other brands. Tahari would go into the market and buy lines. After running it for a year, he sold the store for $14,000.
“I sold it to an Israeli woman and went back to Israel and thought I was rich. I realized I couldn’t even buy a car or a house,” he said. He returned to the U.S. and opened another boutique called Icarus, on Lexington Avenue and 58th Street, right near Bloomingdale’s, which was very successful.
It was a multibrand store and carried a lot of Cactus tube tops. The store lasted many years, but after a year, Tahari exited and started manufacturing tube tops, disco dresses, including the tube dress and handkerchief dress, under the Morning Lady label. The company sold its stock from the backroom, rather than a showroom, to small boutiques. “I didn’t know any better. It was cash and carry,” said Tahari. “We used to sell the tube top for $2 and it retailed for $4. We made them in the U.S.A.”
“Then we were so hot, we started selling from the showroom. Casual Corner and Ups ‘N Downs would come and buy huge quantities,” he said. “Those days, whatever you could manufacture, as much as you could manufacture, there was a customer for it,” he said. Tahari was only selling small stores, including Syrian boutiques. His brother, Harvey Tahari, took over Icarus.
Tahari described his female customer in the early days as a “hippie.” One day, his pattern maker said to him, “Everybody’s copying us. Why don’t you change the name to your name and you’ll get more money for it?” At the time brands such as Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Anne Klein were using the designers’ names. He changed the label to Tahari in 1974.
As the Eighties approached, women began making their mark in the workplace, and Tahari sought to create clothes to make them feel powerful. Previously, he said, women were wearing printed polyester dresses and wrap dresses. He started designing a power suit and work pants, which became his most popular styles. The pants had a flat front and were made of soft fabric. He pioneered the bridge movement and became one of the top names in modern sportswear.
Bloomingdale’s was the first department store to believe in him. Marvin Traub, the retailer’s former chairman and chief executive officer, wanted to put him in a highly trafficked area, near brands such as Jones New York and Evan Picone, but Tahari refused and wanted to be housed with designers. “I asked to be in the middle of the designers. He gave me a shop and we were hot and on fire,” he said. A Bloomingdale’s ad in The New York Times in March
1983 proclaimed the Tahari boutique “a pleasure palace, a hexagon complex with two pavilions in a luxurious Chinese motif,” noting that the Tahari name “may be new to you but remember it well, for Elie is one of the prime design talents of the Eighties.”
Asked how things have changed since those heady days, Tahari said, “In the early days, there was no computer.
When the computers came out, it changed the business. Buyers weren’t merchants anymore. The people who were analytically good became in charge in department stores. That’s when I stopped going to the showroom. A woman would come in and say, ‘ The doublebreasted jacket, we stopped selling the double-breasted jacket.’ And I would say, ‘ This is a different jacket. That was a long jacket, this is a short jacket.’ They would not get it. Because they weren’t merchants anymore. I stopped going to the showroom when computers came out. It became a numbers game.”
Tahari said the most successful period for the company was from the 1970s to the 1990s, when the company really hit its stride.
Eventually Tahari moved to the contemporary areas of department stores. Today his line is housed in “Modern” departments.
Denise Magid, executive vice president, general merchandise manager of ready-towear at Bloomingdale’s, Bloomingdales. com and Concessions, said, “Elie has been a valued member of the Bloomingdale’s family for years. He has a deep understanding of women and what it takes to make her look and feel her best, which has enabled him to build this incredible business. Season after season the collections offer inspiration and style, which is exactly what the Bloomingdale’s customer is looking for.”
Brooke Fisher, vice president, women’s contemporary at Bergdorf Goodman, said, “In a world that is often dictated by trend that can change from season to season, Tahari remains consistent to the brand DNA, and I think that the customer appreciates that. Tahari makes really useful, wearable clothing for the modern woman which is always as fashionable as it is functional.”
Ken Downing, senior vice president, fashion director at Neiman Marcus, observed, “It all started with a tube top 45 years ago. Who could have imagined Elie Tahari would be dressing generations of women for their careers, their casual and most memorable moments. Elie’s love of color, flattering silhouettes and understanding of the ever changing needs of a woman’s wardrobe have made him a go-to designer for his entire career.”
While product has always been his forte, the management of the business has had its share of upheavals.
“I’m not good at managing the business. I’m good as a merchant, as a product person,” he admitted. No matter who was designing the collection over the years, Tahari has been involved in design. “I’ve always been involved with the product and I’m always in charge of the product. That was our strength,” he said.
Today the company is run by a group of people. Susan Klope is vice president of design; Susan Mazursky is controller; Scott Vogue is chief operating officer, and Robyn Goodman is vice president of sales. Tahari said that Klope has been with him “almost from the beginning.” Kobi Halperin was her assistant and when she left, Halperin took charge of design. When Halperin left, Klope came back.
Halperin, who designs his own sportswear collection that is financed by S. Rothschild, a New York-based firm, spent 13 years at Elie Tahari and became executive creative director. “I had an amazing opportunity to learn about the industry and to learn what to do and what not to do,” said Halperin. He said there were some “amazing moments,” and “less amazing moments.”
“The experience at Elie Tahari prepared me for what I am today,” Halperin said. ►