Adrienne Landau Business with Meridian Brands Prepares for Second Act – WWD

Adrien Landau has entered a new chapter.

The 43-year-old luxury fur and accessories brand (now in Faux Fur) has been reborn as a modern lifestyle brand. Through a long-term master licensing agreement with Meridian Brands LLC, the Adrienne Landau brand began as a broad collection to fall under the names Adrienne Landau Quartz and Adrienne Landau Onyx. The collections differ in their price point, fabrics, country of origin and workmanship. Quartz sells for $150 to $1,000, while onyx ranges from $50 to $400.

Meridian Brands is led by CEO Olin Lancaster and President Rosemary Mancino. In addition to Landau, its other brands include Cable & Gauge and Cupio.

“We were in buying mode,” Lancaster said. “We looked at Adrian Landau before covid.[-19], and then turned back. Technically, it’s the master license and then we own the IP once we meet the minimum royalty guarantee. We have invested a lot in this. It’s a real brand, she’s a real person and a real creative force and she still has a lot of energy.

Over the years, Landau has made a name for herself with luxe hair and accessories, and she’s been wearing clothes from time to time. “We got together with her, we know her well and we looked at her records and we thought they were really good,” Lancaster said. “We felt this was a good opportunity to take on a brand that has been around for a while and is well-respected and distributed in the best stores. Her business has been small over the years. We have the opportunity to provide working capital to rebuild it. We’ve been together for a year,” he said.

“They’re perfect partners,” said Landau, who was visiting the showroom that day. “Walking through the showroom I felt like a bride. They keep me involved, I love it. I feel like they really capture the modern Adrian Landau,” she says. “I want to wear everything in here.”

The long-term strategy is to extend the Adrian Landau brand into other product categories such as swimwear, sleepwear, hosiery, fragrances, accessories and home furnishings. “We made it ready to wear at first,” he said.

For fall, Landau sold outerwear and fur accessories to stores such as Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus and Saks, and ready-to-wear to some specialty boutiques and department stores. However, the strategy is to run the business as a direct-to-consumer brand. The website will be launched on August 15 and the company has established a relationship with Revolve, as well as a collaboration with the European full of digital distribution from November to nine countries. “We see this as digitally driven, but wholesale,” Lancaster said.

Manchino says people recognize the brand for Landau’s faux fur and cold-weather accessories, so he opens the lens and vision of building a lifestyle brand. What was important in their approach, she said, was looking for timeless beauty in the industry, beautiful clothes that she could wear and build with ease.

“This is the woman who wants to look fabulous everywhere, all the time, at any price point. We want to make sure that we keep a luxury mindset at all costs. Although it is one brand, there are two labels: Quartz and Onyx with the same purpose,” she says.

Landau herself is involved as a consultant, but the brand has a dedicated design team working on the collection. There are design influences from the collection of talented artists and their paintings that decorate the showroom.

Over the years, Landau has dressed stars including Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Patti Labelle and Diana Ross in real and faux fur. In fact, at the premiere of Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour in Stockholm last month, the performer’s backing singers wore Landau’s custom white faux fur coats.

The collection reflects Landau’s strong interest in spirituality, with minerals, stones and crystals incorporated into some of the designs and influencing the brand’s design philosophy. A crystal is included in each garment, it is on the back of the neck or on the cuff. Each key piece is named after a crystal.

Walking through the showroom at 250 West 39th Street in New York, Lancaster and Mancino pointed out some of the quartz styles they called elements (core pieces). tailored pants; Fur dress, backless dress, knitted sweater; Wrap and bustier. “She can buy any of these pieces as accessories and mix and match and layer them,” he says.

Then there are enhancement pieces inspired by some of Landau’s prints, such as blouses and skirts, a double-breasted faux-valley long coat, a long column tank dress, a long-sleeved column dress and a faux fur vest. Quartz is mainly produced in Italy along with Turkey and India.

Onyx collection for autumn includes vegan leather pants, trench jackets, sweaters, pleated skirts, embroidered jacket, high-waisted mesh skirt, striped tuxedo pull-on pants, striped tuxedo jacket, vegan leather motorcycle jacket, high waist. Mainly made in China and other Asian countries, knitted sweater pants, knitted turtleneck sweater, detachable fake fur cuff and fake fur jacket.

Mancino mentioned that department and specialty stores will mix both lines and bring some from each collection.