Marty Staff, the ebullient apparel executive who added sizzle to staid suitmaker Hugo Boss before resigning under peculiar circumstances, is staging a comeback as the president and chief executive of Joseph Abboud, The Post has learned.
RCS MediaGroup, the Italian owner of Joseph Abboud, is expected to announce the management change today, along with the closing of a previously announced agreement to sell the company to private equity firm J.W. Childs for $73 million.
Robert Wichser, the president and CEO of Joseph Abboud, has resigned.
The new owners and management could pave the way for a resolution of longstanding litigation between designer Joseph Abboud and RCS, one source said.
In lawsuits filed against RCS, its subsidiaries and several executives, including Wichser, Abboud has argued that RCS reneged on a promise that would have allowed him to retain creative control following the 2000 sale of his company to the Italian conglomerate.
RCS, which has been selling its retail operations to focus on publishing, filed a counter suit that alleges Abboud failed to live up to his contract obligations, thereby diminishing the value of the business.
Abboud has been quietly meeting with Staff to try to negotiate a role for himself within the newly organized company, though no agreement has yet been finalized.
“I’m looking forward to the possibility of a relationship where I would be the designer,” Abboud said. “I’ve known Marty for a long time, and I have a lot of respect for him.”
Staff declined to comment on his appointment, or his plans for the company.
As CEO of Hugo Boss USA from 1998 to 2002, Staff is credited with creating a hip persona for the German suitmaker, in large part by injecting his larger-than-life personality into the brand.
He died his hair blond and partied into the early hours of the morning at hot Manhattan clubs like Lotus, where table No. 1 once bore a plaque engraved with his name.
Profits and sales more than doubled during his tenure, a seeming endorsement of his high-gloss strategy.
Then in May 2002, the good times stopped rolling. Hugo Boss’s German headquarters said “inventory irregularities” at its U.S. operations would force it to write off $5.5 million, erasing the division’s profits for the prior two years.
Staff eventually resigned from the company, and has not spoken publicly about the terms of his departure.
His friends said that Hugo Boss’s German executives worried that Staff’s personality had become too intertwined with the brand.
Firing him would have resulted in a big severance payment, so instead they raised the possibility of impropriety, these people said.
A Hugo Boss spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
People who have spoken to Staff about his plans said he is not expected to carry the party-boy image to Abboud, which he wants to develop into more of a lifestyle brand.
There is little doubt among apparel executives that Staff’s brand of high-energy retailing will breathe new life into Abboud, making it a suitmaker first, but not a stuffed shirt.
That was then
Former Hugo Boss CEO Marty Staff is one of the most colorful figures in the very colorful fashion industry:
A fixture in New York gossip columns, he hung out at the trendy nightclub Lotus, partying with “Sopranos” cast members.
He dyed his hair blonde.
He has a butterfly tattoo on his back.
He wore T-shirts and cargo pants.
Under his watch, Boss sales rose from under $400,00 in 1998 to $3 million in 2000.
Source Post research