An Interview With Elie Tahari

Elie Tahari

Image: Jonny Valiant

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For Israeli-born fashion mogul Elie Tahari, life has been a story of rags to riches in the rag trade. Today, the 55-year-old—who slept on park benches when he arrived almost penniless in Manhattan more than 35 years ago—commands a $500-million-a-year sportswear empire.

He started by designing tube tops for the disco crowd while changing lightbulbs in the garment district. Eventually, he discovered his niche in a growing market between the Gap and Armani.
            
"I will have to find an item that people want, to make sure that that item is perfect,” says Tahari, who works alongside his 35-year-old wife, Rory, the label’s vice chairman and creative director, at Elie Tahari headquarters on 42nd Street. "It’s a very concentrated way of running a business. It’s very intense . . . I get a lot of frustration, but I put every item on the line as if it’s the only item I’m making. And everything's got to be right about it."
      
In an exclusive interview with Portfolio.com, Tahari discussed his aversion to staging runway shows and recruiting celebrities; his plans for a fragrance and eventually an initial public offering; his lucrative foray into Manhattan real estate; and his lawsuit against his former friend and fellow co-founder Andrew Rosen of the successful Theory label. He also talked about his recent first meeting with fashion doyenne Anna Wintour—after more than three decades as a force in the business.    


Lloyd Grove: I ran across this quote of yours. I’ll read it to you: "I get out of bed, and I look around and say, 'Don’t you fuck with me today.' I tell the spirit, 'Today, I am in charge, and you are not going to screw with me.' And that’s how I start my day."
 
Elie Tahari: That’s right.
 
L.G.: So who or what is this spirit that’s trying to fuck with you?
 
E.T.: There was a show with Lena Horne—this must have been 25 years ago—and I watched her start the show like that, where she’s lying on the bed and she is waking up, and she says to the audience, "Good morning. I pray it’s going to be a nice day.” And then she stops and she looks at the audience and says, "This is how I get up out of the bed.” And she gets up out of the bed [Tahari stands up to demonstrate], and she walks over to the window, and she turns around, and she says, "Now you don’t fuck with me today!" But it stuck with me. . . . You can start your day saying, "I am not a barometer. A barometer goes up and down. I’m a thermostat. I’m going to set on 72 degrees, and I’m going to stay like that today. And nothing is going to take my mind off me and my center." I kind of have to deal with the spirit, and I think everybody has a ritual. It was, I think, Thoreau, or Browning, or Eric Butterworth who said, "I get up out of bed, and I get all the wrinkles out of my bed. And when I finish taking all of the wrinkles out of the bed, this is when I take all the wrinkles out of my day. And I’m set to be the master of my spirit, the captain of my soul."

L.G.: "Invictus" [a poem by William Ernest Henley]. Speaking of beds, do you still remember what it was like sleeping on a park bench?
 
E.T.: Yes.
 
L.G.: What was that like? Do you remember how that felt?
 
E.T.: Um, I have slept on floors and outdoors and in the fields, whatever. When I arrived in New York—it was 1971—it was a couple of weeks in Central Park. I was a 20-year-old, and I didn’t even know that Central Park was not safe at night. Now, it’s safe. In those days, it wasn’t safe.  
 
L.G.: But do you remember the physical sensation of what that felt like, to sleep on a park bench? Do you have some muscle memory of that?
 
E.T.: Um, it was stiff. [Laughs]
 
L.G.: Did you hurt your back?
 
E.T.: No, I’m used to it. I ran away for a month as a kid [from the Israeli orphanage where his troubled family had sent him to live], and I remember running, hiding on roofs, and sleeping all night, taking the shoes as your pillow. When I got to New York, I had a pillow—a backpack with my clothes. But I was a kid who grew up in the streets in Israel, mostly in a Tel Aviv neighborhood. I was born in Jerusalem. My parents came from Iran.
 

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