An Interview With Elie Tahari

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L.G.: Your parents came from Iran, but you’re a sabra [a native-born Israeli].

 
E.T.: Yes. My father had a fabric store, and he used to sell fabrics, and uh, one of the reasons he left Iran was because of persecution. They burned the store down.
 
L.G.: They burned it down? They, meaning who? Because wasn’t the shah pro-Western?
 
E.T.: When the shah ran away—when his father passed away—he ran away to Italy, and Persian Jews and Italian Jews took care of him. And so when he came back, he took care of all the Jews he was in business with. The shah was one of the richest men in the world, he was in lots of businesses.

L.G.: But obviously, Islamic fundamentalism was percolating, and the Ayatollah Khomeini was a big force. Is that where it was coming from, the anti-Jewish sentiment?
 
E.T.: Yes, a lot of anti-Jewish sentiment the shah kept at bay as long as he could. But as soon as, you know, the shah died or had left Iran, a lot of Jews fled.
 
L.G.: But your parents got out of Iran way before all that.
 
E.T.: Yes, the shah allowed Jewish organizations, mostly American, to send airplanes to support the Jews in Iran. An airplane would come at midnight, seven days a week, whenever. The Jews in the synagogue would notify all the Jewish people, "If you want to go to Israel, show up at midnight in a heliport." And just like that, anybody came.

L.G.: And that was how your parents emigrated [from Iran] to Israel. Okay, let’s switch gears and talk about your business.
 
E.T.: I’m having a good time.
 
L.G.: Good, good. So you have this fabulous company. I don’t know a woman in New York who doesn’t own at least one of your business suits. It sort of started slowly. You sort of avoided the hype of the fashion industry. You didn’t do runway shows.

E.T.: Correct.
 
L.G.: You haven’t spent a lot of time and energy courting celebrities or getting them to wear your clothes. You’ve just done your own thing. One of my friends from the garment business tells me that one of the things that impresses him about you is that you just show enormous discipline and you go your own way and you’re not, like, pushed off your game by some new fad here or there. When you started this company, when you started out in the fashion business, or the clothing business, what was your vision? What were trying to do? What was your aesthetic for fashion?

E.T.: Okay, you asked a lot of questions!
 
L.G.: Yeah, I did. Too many questions.
 
E.T.: You know, you're asking the right questions. But when I started in this company, it was April 1974. At that time, I could only know how, maybe, to produce a T-shirt or to wear a T-shirt to a market, so at that time I clearly—
 
L.G.: You knew how to make tube tops.
 
E.T.: I knew how to make tube tops, yeah. That was a fairly easy process—you cut the tube from both edges and stitch it. . . .

L.G.: And you knew how to do all that because you had fine-motor control. I mean, you were a mechanic in the Israeli air force. So you have very good eye-hand coordination.
 
E.T.: And I was an electrician in the garment center. When there [was] an electrical problem, and I would see all the stuff that went on. . . . The reason I knew different things, I made it my business to know it, because I needed to survive that way.To know how to make things, I had to make some things, sell them, or find somebody to sell it. So when I started out, I couldn’t afford to make a collection. I could afford to make one piece at a time. And I didn’t have the financing, or the knowledge, or any of that. So to me, I will have to find an item that people want, to make sure that that item is perfect—its fit, the quality, the need, the demand out there, the price, you know, it has to be right, so it flies out. And, in many ways, I treat my business today—in whatever I can control—in the same way. But it’s a very concentrated way of running a business. It’s very intense. You can’t demand that from everybody, so it’s tough. 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—the demand, the fit, the quality, the price ratio, everything—before I approve it to go on the line. When I do that, and I’m focused, I have a very successful business.

L.G.: What’s your design aesthetic?
 

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