For the last five decades, Elie Tahari has been synonymous with sophistication as the label has been carried in more than 800 retailers across 40 countries, worn by the likes of Joan Rivers and Jennifer Hudson. Recently, the New York-based firm surpassed the $1 billion mark in annual revenue.
In the wake of the pandemic, Jeremey Tahari’s somewhat rough entry into the family business ultimately began—in real estate, granted. During COVID, he, like many others, “didn’t know what to do” and decided to get his broker’s license. This work in leasing and refinancing eventually led him back to the fashion division, where it all began.
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“I think deep down, I always knew I would come back to it,” he said. “When my dad tucked me into bed every night as a little kid, I always thought, ultimately, that we’d end up here. But it was a windy road.”
The 24-year-old is the chief executive officer and creative director of his father’s fashion label, Elie Tahari, and managing partner of Tahari Capital, a private equity firm he restructured from the family’s enterprises in 2020.
In a one-on-one chat with editor-in-chief Peter Sadera at the Sourcing Journal Fall Summit, the executive shared his experience navigating Tahari’s strategic evolution from a fashion label into a multi-sector enterprise.
“I think I appreciate it most when I’m applying the creativity in the business and the business in the creativity and so they kind of are always inextricably interlinked,” he said.
Tahari took over the management of his family’s business ventures in 2020 and became CEO and creative director of the Elie Tahari brand in 2025.
“The vision goes through iterations, and it gets clearer as you go along,” Tahari said. And over the past 24 months, it’s gotten pretty straightforward: To “leverage the cachet of the Tahari name into multiple different profit incentive vehicles.” He sees real estate and hospitality as natural adjacencies—a trend observed across the broader consumer goods and luxury apparel industry.
His principal role at Tahari Capital is that of chief executive officer of the fashion conglomerate. Tahari also founded and manages the investment firm’s $300 million real estate portfolio, which he restructured from the family’s enterprises in 2020. Since launching Tahari Realty in 2022, the full-service real estate brokerage has reportedly facilitated over $250 million in transactional volume. For Tahari, the duality isn’t unusual.
“Everything’s interlinked, right? It’s all one economy,” he said. “Rents are rising, things are becoming more expensive—what that indicates to me is that the demand is increasing and the supply is the same, and that’s creating the prices to rise…there’s a lack of affordability. The buying power of the consumer has weakened. While that might be great for the profitability in real estate, in consumer goods and apparel, that’s horrible. It’s an interesting dichotomy, but it’s definitely all interlinked.”
When tariffs hit, Tahari’s “immediate inclination” was to eat the cost out of “respect and honor of the relationships” with vendors that the family has been working with for the past 20, 30, 40 years.
“When I read that information, the decision became very easy,” Tahari said, now “getting creative with structuring” to work through these challenges.
On balancing creative direction with evolving business strategies and brand legacy, Tahari takes an integrated operational approach, emphasizing accessible luxury and honoring the foundation laid by his father.
“When Elie founded the brand in 1974, he started with the tube top—that was serious empowerment and pioneering women’s suiting,” Tahari said before contemplating what empowerment means now, in the 21st century’s age of individualism. “For me, it’s making people feel the most confident that they can when they’re wearing what they’re wearing, right? Elie always says, ‘Make clothing quieter than the woman, so her true beauty can shine through.’ That’s always resonated with me.”
