Lord & Taylor owner Regal Brands Global (RGB) has advanced on its strategic plan to bring back the banner’s private label line — with categories ranging from shoes to women’s dresses and apparel and men’s wear.
The Lord & Taylor private label for women’s dresses and apparel are the first group to showcase on the retailer’s website as part of its new “Lord & Taylor Heritage Collection.” Starting out the gate are currently 168 items for shoppers to choose from across dresses, tops, skirts and women’s suiting. Regal is keeping production of this portion of the private label line in-house until it can find the right licensing partner.
Shoes could be the next category, according to Sina Yenel, Regal Brands Global’s (RBG) chief strategy and brand officer for the Lord & Taylor brand. He said “shoes are currently in the bidding stage with potential licensees.” In addition, the RGB is also in talks with a possible licensee for socks and hosiery. Yenel said both shoes and socks and hosiery would be for women’s and men’s products. In the case of socks, it is looking to add a U.S. licensing partner.
The brand last year partnered with The Kersheh Group as the exclusive licensee for sleepwear in the U.S. for men, women, and children. Included in the U.S. license for loungewear. It also includes socks and basic underwear, although those categories are limited to distribution in Canada.
According to Yenel, “The Heritage Collection is sold at lordandtaylor.com and through select luxury boutiques worldwide. Wholesale is very much open. You will not see Heritage Collection on U.S. retailers yet, but EU [has] some exposure through [those] luxury boutiques.”
Yenel said his team works closely with its licensing partners. “Each licensee has a dedicated point of contact on our side and we work in high-frequency communication with them rather than checking in seasonally,” the chief strategy officer said. “We also bring licensees together on collaborations from time to time, presenting complementary products to retailers as a coordinated offer rather than as separate categories. That’s how we keep a single point of view across the portfolio.”
The brand’s core customer is a woman between ages 30 and 55 who is less interested in chasing trends and more focused on building a wardrobe that lasts. “She’s buying for real occasions — work, events, travel — and she cares about fabric, fit and finish,” Yenel said. “She knows the Lord & Taylor name and what it has stood for, but she expects the product in front of her to feel current, not nostalgic.”
Yenel added that RBG has positioned Lord & Taylor as “accessible luxury/elevate contemporary, where quality justifies the price without requiring a designer budget.”
RBG acquired the Lord & Taylor intellectual property (IP) assets in September 2024. RBG’s investors are well connected in both apparel and real estate. Yenel is the fifth generation in his family to have a background working in the textiles industry. He also has experience in wholesale manufacturing from fiber to fashion.
Lord & Taylor was founded in 1826 by Samuel Lord initially as a dry goods retailer that was renamed in 1834 after a family member, George Washington Taylor, joined the business. The nameplate was part of Associated Dry Goods in 1916 until it was acquired by May Department Stores Co. in 1986. It was sold to Federated Department Stores in 2005, now Macy’s Inc., and then sold a year later to NRDC Equity Partners for $1.2 billion.
NRDC move the operation to its Hudson’s Bay Co. division in 2008. The business was sold in 2019 for $75 million to fashion rental subscription service Le Tote Inc., but both ended up in bankruptcy court in 2020 in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Saadia Group acquired the IP assets in October 2020 for $12 million, but in 2024 lost control of the IP when it defaulted on the loan agreement.
