Dive Brief:
- Adrienne Landau is relaunching with two collections from the 43-year-old brand available online Aug. 28, according to a release sent to Fashion Dive. The line will also be available in select stores beginning in September.
- The reimagined fashion brand will feature faux fur and a ready-to-wear collection. The higher-end Adrienne Landau Quartz collection will retail for between $150 and $1,000, and the more accessibly-priced Adrienne Landau Onyx will range from $50 to $400.
- Both lines were created in partnership with Meridian Brands, LLC, a private label women’s apparel manufacturer whose other labels include Cable & Gauge, Cupio and Sol & Sea.
Dive Insight:
Meridian Brands was officially formed in 2021 when it moved to acquire HMS Productions LLC, known for its design, sourcing, manufacturing and distribution of branded and private label women’s apparel. That deal was finalized in 2022, and the company has been ramping up its position in the fashion industry since.
Designer Adrienne Landau, who began her career as a painter, officially launched her line of fur coats, capes and cloaks in 1980 and hit her heyday in the late 1980s, designing furs for luminaries including Nancy Reagan and Elizabeth Taylor. However, by the early 1990s, business was challenging, and her company struggled throughout that decade with poor management decisions and changing fashion mores, including pressures from the anti-fur movement.
After navigating those hurdles, though, the designer slowly built back her business, and by 2016, she launched an e-commerce site, spurred by high profile fans including Beyoncé, who wore a Landau fur on the cover of her 2016 album Lemonade.
This relaunch will be a collaborative process between Landau and Meridian, Rosemary Mancino, president of Meridian Brands, said in an email to Fashion Dive.
“While the Meridian Brands team handles the actual design process, Adrienne has stayed on as a valued creative advisor and is very involved as a point of inspiration as the brand evolves into a full lifestyle brand,” Mancino said. “With the ready-to-wear, Adrienne's own artwork has been brought in as prints and the design team even went through Adrienne's own closet to source vintage pieces to recreate for the modern Adrienne Landau woman. Another important point of inspiration is Adrienne's own belief in the energy of crystals. For the new collections, each garment will have a crystal embedded in the piece.”
Mancino added that as the Adrienne Landau brand looks to expand to other segments, it will continue to draw on “Adrienne’s personal sense of style and spirit.”
“Adrienne now splits her time between Miami and NYC, but when she is in NY, she does enjoy visiting the team for creative inspiration and seeing the collections as they evolve,” Mancino said.
The team is building the relaunched brand to be digitally native, said Mancino, who added that wholesale will be a complement to digital.
Both collections will be sold on the brand’s e-commerce site through its wholesale partner Revolve, and outerwear and fur accessories will be available at Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus and Saks, as confirmed by a company spokesperson. Ready-to-wear will be available in specialty boutiques and department stores, and the company also confirmed that there would be a European fulfillment partner for digital distribution, which would begin with nine countries starting in November. After this fall, drops are planned for holiday 2023, resort 2024, spring 2024 and summer 2024.
