Michael Strahan is set to launch a direct-to-consumer custom tailoring operation, a new avenue of growth for his clothing brand after a decade in business.
Michael Strahan – Photographer: Sean Gardner/Getty Images
The Michael Strahan Design Lab plans to deliver made-to-order suits within two weeks at flat prices, such as $399 for a two-piece set. The new line of custom suits will be available through its own online shop, which goes live on Wednesday.
It’s a big leap for the former football-star-turned-television-personality, who in recent years has been adding shelf space for his apparel line at traditional retailers including JCPenney, Belk and Tailored Brands, which owns Men’s Wearhouse. The brand has also offered made-to-measure suits through Men’s Wearhouse.
Management still wants to add new retail chains, as well as expand in existing ones, and use the new site to offer customized production for groups like sports teams, wedding parties and corporate events. The company declined to share revenue figures.
Strahan, an NFL Hall of Fame member who cohosts ABC’s Good Morning America, and his cofounder at production firm SMAC Entertainment, Constance Schwartz-Morini, started the namesake brand as a suit line in 2015. The goal was to create an affordable, tailored clothing line, Schwartz-Morini said in a statement. This latest expansion comes as economic concerns weigh on consumer confidence and budget-conscious shoppers pull back on a variety of purchases.
“Typically celebrity brands – it’s hard for them to survive,” Koral Chen, senior vice president of brand development at SMAC, said in an interview. “But the fact is we’ve been here for 10 years and growing.”
The brand has since expanded into licensed sports apparel with the NFL and NHL, including an arrangement with US sports merchandise company Fanatics Inc.
Strahan’s brand has also dabbled in sports deals and talent management, signing top college football star Travis Hunter to a name, image and likeness agreement. And in March, Strahan signed a partnership with the United Football League to be its off-field apparel partner.
There is no more fertile fashion imagination in Milanese fashion than Francesco Risso, whose latest collection for Marni was the fruit of an intense artistic collaboration with Olaolu Slawn and Soldier Boyfriend.
Marni fall/winter 2025 collection in Milan – Courtesy
A collaboration that began with all three of them “locked together in a studio in London for a month,” in Risso’s words, and ended with their paintings displayed on the show-space walls and printed onto many outfits. Large images of wolves, fox tails, dark birds, flying pigs; the fruit of a residency he dubbed “The Pink Sun”.
All presented inside a surreal mock jazz club, where every item of furniture was draped into hand-painted black and white tablecloths or chair covers. Though this fall 2025 collection, on the other hand, was an explosion of color.
“For me, this collection is the Marni Preservation Hall,” added Risso. Pre-show, waiters served Martini vermouth spritzes, as guests admired the art.
Marni fall/winter 2025 collection in Milan – Courtesy
Showing composite cool fashion: Crombie coats that become cocoons, tube skirts that had plenty of kick, and shirt dresses morphed into gowns. “Deconstructed or reconstructed, where I wanted to show my love of Marni. And where every piece was ‘a seed vault’,” explained the ever-philosophical Francesco.
Pragmatism mixed with practicality, he claimed where embroidered flowers bloomed from satin dresses, and gowns had fantastical biomorphic shapes.
Risso even indulged in several cool inside witticisms, like using his close friend and fellow designer Laurence Steele as a model, in an Edwardian top coat trimmed with fox tails. Or attiring his pal Aymeline Valade in a Victorian falling-off-the-shoulders red satin gown, finished with black wool shoulders, from which drooped fabric flowers. Its back finished with the same print of a pumpkin head seen as the show backdrop.
Slawn and Soldier are Nigerian artists living in London, whom Francesco met in a random encounter. “Slawn an instinctive artist. Soldier is a Renaissance style creator. I sculpt with color,” expounded the very thrilled Risso, who later Wednesday night hosted an opening in his Milan home of their art.
Francesco Ragazzi is turning over a new leaf. The Italian designer recently sold Palm Angels, the luxury streetwear label he founded in 2015, to brand management company Bluestar Alliance, and is now launching into high-end perfumery with a new project unveiled on Wednesday February 26 during Milan Fashion Week.
Francesco Ragazzi’s new perfume brand has launched its first seven fragrances – Réservation
The brand is called Réservation, and is described as “a new perfume brand inspired by Italian fashion, French know-how, and the spirit of California.” Réservation’s launch collection features seven fragrances inspired by various times in an imaginary day in a luxury hotel. The brand’s name evokes the world of travel and hospitality, as illustrated by its showroom, decked out like a hotel reception.
To enter this new segment, Ragazzi has surrounded himself with a solid team based in the heart of Milan’s luxury district, opening the brand’s headquarters and showroom on prestigious via Montenapoleone.
He set up the company that runs Réservation as a 50-50 partnership with Archive, an investment firm owned by the holding company of the Ruffini family, which controls Moncler. Archive is led by Pietro Ruffini, son of Moncler boss Remo Ruffini, and also holds stakes in labels The Attico and Pas Normal Studios, and in the restaurant business, with Langosteria Holding and Concettina ai Tre Santi.
Ragazzi has also brought on board two Frenchmen, Yann Vasnier, who has designed several fragrances as perfumer at Givaudan, and Frédérique Obin, who has worked for the Costes Hotel in Paris and Thom Browne, and is Réservation’s creative director.
The first Réservation perfumes will be commercialised soon at €250 for a 100 ml bottle on the brand’s e-shop and at select multibrand retailers.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday raised hopes for another month-long pause on steep new tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, saying they could take effect on April 2, and floated a 25% “reciprocal” tariff on European cars and other goods.
Reuters
A White House official, however, said Trump’s previous March 4 deadline for the 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods remained in effect “as of this moment,” pending his review of Mexican and Canadian actions to secure their borders and halt the flow of migrants and the opioid fentanyl into the U.S.
Trump sowed confusion during his first cabinet meeting on Wednesday, when he was asked about the timing for the start of the duties for Canada and Mexico and replied that it would be April 2.
“I have to tell you that, you know, on April 2, I was going to do it on April 1,” Trump said. “But I’m a little bit superstitious, I made it April 2, the tariffs go on. Not all of them but a lot of them.”
Trump’s comments prompted jumps in the value of the Canadian dollar and Mexican peso versus the greenback.
Canadian Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told reporters that Canada would wait for signed executive orders from Trump before reacting.
“Our mission is still to avoid the tariffs, extend the suspension if we need to,” Champagne said. “We are prepared – there will be a targeted, strategic but a firm response” if Trump imposes tariffs.
Mexico’s Economy Ministry declined to comment on Trump’s remarks, but said Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard will meet on Thursday with newly confirmed U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Friday.
Lutnick told the cabinet meeting that the fentanyl-related actions were paused for 30 days but referred to “overall” tariffs on April 2. He did not specify whether the March 4 deadline remained in effect.
“So the big transaction is April 2, but the fentanyl-related things, we’re working hard on the border,” Lutnick said. “At the end of that 30 days, they have to prove to the president that they’ve satisfied him in that regard. If they have, he’ll give them a pause, or he won’t.”
Trump has targeted early April for imposing reciprocal tariffs matching import duty rates of other countries and offseting their other restrictions. His trade advisers consider European countries’ value added taxes to be akin to a tariff.
Trump, asked whether he has decided on a tariff rate for goods from the European Union, replied: “We have made a decision, and we’ll be announcing it very soon, and it’ll be 25%, generally speaking, and that’ll be on cars, and all of the things.”
He said the EU is a “different case” from Canada and takes advantage of the U.S. in different ways.
“They don’t accept our cars. They don’t accept, essentially our farm products,” Trump said, adding that the EU was formed “in order to screw the United States.”
A European Commission spokesperson said the EU “will react firmly and immediately against unjustified barriers to free and fair trade,” including for tariffs that challenge legal and non-discriminatory policies.
“The European Union is the world’s largest free market. And it has been a boon for the United States,” the spokesperson said.
Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, was planning to meet with U.S. lawmakers in Washington on Wednesday, but not with any Trump administration officials.
Also on Wednesday, the U.S. Senate voted 56-43 to confirm Greer as U.S. Trade Representative, putting a veteran of the Republican president’s first-term trade wars fully on the job.
Greer, who served as chief of staff to former USTR Robert Lighthizer, won the support of five Democrats, including both senators from Michigan, the center of the U.S. auto industry.
Trade groups welcomed Greer’s confirmation, lauding his commitment to consulting with industry and standing up for U.S. businesses, farmers and workers. “We share Ambassador Greer’s desire for an active and pragmatic trade policy that creates U.S. jobs and more resilient supply chains,” said Jake Colvin, president of the National Foreign Trade Council.
Greer told senators during his Senate confirmation hearing that he wanted to quickly renegotiate the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade to ensure China does not use it as a back door to the U.S. market to avoid other tariffs.
“Right out of the gate, I expect that we’ll be taking a second look at the USMCA,” Greer said.
Asked what changes he would like to see in the pact, Greer zeroed in on further tightening automotive content rules.
“I think we should look at the rule of origin for automobiles and aerospace and other things to look and see if we need to have any kind of restriction on content or value added from foreign countries of concern, or non-market economies,” he said, using language that U.S. trade officials often use to describe China.