Lord & Taylor, which has been operating only online for the past several years, has released a private label dubbed the Heritage Collection.
Regal Brands Global bought the venerable department store’s intellectual property in late 2024 from Saadia Group, which had acquired the department store during the bankruptcy of Lord & Taylor’s previous owner Le Tote.
At that time, Lord & Taylor Chief Strategy Officer Sina Yenel said Regal Brands was working on a slow-fashion merchandising strategy based on elevated style, without being super-luxury.
The Heritage Collection assortment is priced from around $100 for items like shorts and tops to $1,000 for more formal dresses. The effort is a return to a merchandising strategy embraced by Lord & Taylor decades ago, but is also “part of a broader strategy to expand the Lord & Taylor brand across new categories and channels,” the company said in a press release Monday.
Like many traditional department stores, Lord & Taylor long ago embraced owned brands as a way to differentiate its merchandise and further its own name.
Via licensing, the plan is to bring the Lord & Taylor name to categories like home textiles — a launch that is imminent — and daywear. The company said it also continues to invest in “proprietary technology that powers its marketplace.”
The Heritage Collection is only available on the Lord & Taylor marketplace for now, but there is an opportunity for interested off-price retailers to carry the brand, according to Yenel. Plans to wholesale the label are also in the works — not to department stores but to luxury boutiques globally that the company already works with, he told Retail Dive by email Friday.
"Private label has always been in Lord & Taylor's DNA — it's just never been something we made noise about,” he said in a statement. “The Heritage Collection is our way of honoring that history and carrying it into the next era of the brand. Launching under a name with nearly two centuries behind it is a responsibility, and we wanted the work to speak first.”
Yenel also said the release of the Heritage Collection is “only the first chapter” of the Lord & Taylor revamp. A future chapter could include a return to brick-and-mortar retail.
“When that time comes the concept will sure be different than a big department store,” he said. “I would focus on local concept stores with sales events.”
