Who owns bill blass

At this time Bill Blass Ltd. Bill Blass USA, a bridge line between couture and ready-to-wear was launched in and licensed to Augustus Clothiers.

Pennsylvania House introduced a Bill Blass furniture collection of 50 pieces in The following year Blass, who had been licensing fragrances to Revlon for almost 30 years, bought out his contract and assigned it to Five Star Fragrances.

The women's jeans license was awarded to The Resource Club Ltd. The Bill Blass USA line closed and was replaced by a better-than-bridge suit collection to be made and marketed by Zaralo. Blass hired George Ackerman, a former Donna Karan executive, to replace him as chief executive officer in March Shortly before year's end, however, Ackerman left the company for reasons that were not disclosed, and Blass, who had recently suffered a minor stroke, resumed his former duties.

He announced in February that he was planning to sell his firm. Blass, in October , concluded an agreement to sell his company to Haresh T. Tharani, chairman of The Resource Club, the firm's largest licensee, and Michael Groveman, the firm's chief financial officer, with the former becoming chairman and the latter chief executive officer.

The purchase price was to be paid by issuing investment-grade bonds self-liquidating over ten years, based on the Blass trademarks, brand equity, and licensing revenues. The designer committed himself to maintaining an active role in the company through a long-term contract 'with financial interest.

The loan was secured by the company's trademarks and licenses, which were placed into an entity that would receive all the cash from the licenses.

By creating investment grade asset-backed bonds, we have forged a vehicle that enables apparel industry leaders to leverage their assets at favorable terms, while allowing large financial institutions, which have strict investment requirements, to invest in these assets.

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Alexandra Ilyashov. Classic American sportswear brand Bill Blass has relaunched today. After debuting 45 years ago and enduring many unsuccessful revival attempts, how does it plan to finally make a triumphant comeback? By eschewing the typical fashion-industry schedule, for starters.

Bill Blass is giving that a go, as a completely season-less, e-commerce-only business — a particularly salient gesture right now, considering that designers are being more vocal than ever about the demands of producing season after season.

Chris Benz, J. Crew alum who designed an eponymous line from to , is at the helm of the new BillBlass. The next slew of looks will drop in March; eventually assortments of new pieces will roll out monthly. Photo: Bill Blass. Hedi Slimane's revamp of what we then referred to as Yves Saint Laurent was easily the most radical — and, at the time, controversial — brand makeover of recent memory.

But what Chris Benz has done at American sportswear label Bill Blass will make Slimane look downright precious about the brand he took creative leadership of in While he's kept the founder's full name, Benz who quietly shuttered his namesake label in has set about reviving the famed American design house with little else.

We had nothing. The brand has been in limbo since Jeffrey Monteiro left his head designer position in Before that, Peter Som took the reins from to ; he left while the brand's financially troubled parent company Nexcen was struggling to sell the underperforming label, ultimately did sell the trademarks at the end of to Peacock International Holdings, LLC, which then changed its name to Bill Blass Group, LLC.

The problems didn't end there, though: in , Bill Blass Ltd, which manufactured the Bill Blass couture line which Nexcen still owned , filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy. Then, in , Bill Blass Group dismissed Monteiro along with the entire design staff a few weeks before the brand's spring show.

Since then, Peacock has pulled back all the licenses and reregistered all of the Bill Blass trademarks internationally. Goldblatt — an industry veteran with over 35 years of experience in merchandising at Macy's and with his own consultancy. Benz's hiring was announced a few weeks later.

Benz immediately sought to shift the conversation away from the brand's recent financial troubles, launching a new website with a live stream of the house's archives as the landing page early this spring.