Elie Tahari, the Israeli-American fashion designer and founder of his eponymous New York label that became a sought-after staple for working women throughout the ’80s and ’90s, is ready to hand over the reins.
After celebrating his brand’s 50th anniversary last September, Tahari, now 73, is turning over control of his $1 billion company to his son, Jeremey Tahari, who will lead the Elie Tahari brand forward as CEO and creative director. Jeremey Tahari has been working alongside his father since he was 16 and launched his own streetwear brand, Anti, before spending time working in real estate.
“After 50 years of being in the business and dressing women, I decided that he’s ready,” says Elie Tahari over Zoom. “He’s got a good eye. He’s very ready to do it, and he’s taking over little by little.”
Elie Tahari will stay on as chairman and will still have a role in designing the Elie Tahari Collection, the company’s luxury line that split off from the Tahari brand in 2018. Tahari has since been licensed by Bluestar Alliance through a joint venture, the holding company that owns Off-White and Scotch Soda, while the Elie Tahari Collection, owned solely by the family, transitioned to a direct-to-consumer model after the start of the pandemic, pulling out of department stores. Last year, the brand made the decision to bring the collection back to store partners Saks, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus.
Designer-founder successions are difficult to navigate, as brands that have fostered loyal consumer bases around one specific vision need to carefully bridge that consumer — and new ones — into the next era. US designers, especially, have faced difficulties in separating their brands from their iconic founders. Calvin Klein’s New York Fashion Week comeback in February under Veronica Leoni ended a seven-year hiatus without a creative director for the brand; Donna Karan New York tapped Public School designers Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow to much fanfare, but the duo exited when LVMH sold the brand to G-III Apparel Group in 2016; Carolina Herrera’s is a rare success story, with Wes Gordon widely considered the perfect torchbearer for her brand post-retirement.
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Elie Tahari says it’s easy when it’s in the family. But it’s notable that he’s not stepping back entirely, making instead for a gradual transition. For now, Jeremey Tahari says his first step is to put his ear to the ground and listen. “My father always says, ‘You got two ears and one mouth, so listen twice and talk once.’ So I’m just trying to listen to what everyone has to say. There’s been a lot that’s been done right over the last 50 years, and so there’s a lot to be learned from it. And so the first order of business for me is really listening.”
He says his father’s upbringing — arriving in New York after growing up in an Iranian orphanage with $100 to his name — has inspired him. “It’s that same resiliency that is in my blood. I’ve seen the way he approaches everything, and I’ve tried to learn from it my whole life. You roll with those punches, and whether it’s that you’ve got to find a new place to manufacture goods because of the tariffs, or you’ve got to find a new structure to work with your retail stores because maybe a gross rent structure isn’t working, you’ve got to shift to a profit-sharing structure – it really depends case by case, but it’s just creativity and resiliency.”
There are other more tactical plans too. Jeremey Tahari is excited about the prospect of generative AI and ChatGPT making it easier to predict demand for clothing — something he sees as being a weakness in the planning process at the moment — as well as iterating on designs before something gets put into production. He says he asked the design team recently to put sketches from the brand’s upcoming January 2026 delivery into ChatGPT to see it on a model. “It came out so incredible. It went through a few iterations, and one of the images came out with a neckline that was supposed to drape over the shoulder, but it went under the arm. We loved it so much that we’re now running a prototype with that accidental rendering. So I think there’s a lot to be done there, and it’s really exciting.”
It’s a departure from his father’s approach. As he reflects on his 50 years in business, Elie Tahari — who slept in Central Park when he first moved to New York before landing his first job at a boutique — pinpoints several hits that defined his career: the tube top, which he popularised in the ’70s; the disco dress, which was inspired by his nights out clubbing in his 20s; and the suit, which he says became a uniform for women working in offices and looking for alternatives to printed, polyester dresses. “I never thought I was a good business leader or a businessman, but I had a good eye and I was a good merchant, and I knew what people wanted to wear and I tried to give them what they wanted to wear. That was my formula. I happened to hit a few home runs.”
Elie Tahari’s advice for his son? “I will tell him to produce, always, a good quality product, that is honest and that has good value and good style that people want to buy. And there is not that much out there. And I will tell him the same thing that I learned. Be humble and treat people the way you want to be treated. I keep repeating that to him all the time. I tell everybody that might be interested in this industry, if you love it, do it. And if you do it, do it honestly and produce an honest product and you ll do well eventually. I have many ups and downs. I had to borrow money many times, but I never gave up. It is not how many times you fall, it is how many times you get up. And I tell this to everybody that I meet in the industry who asks me for advice.”
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