In a market of dupes and downshifts, luxury has to earn its price tag all over again.
“Luxury has gotten so outrageously expensive.” That’s Alex Angelchik’s blunt diagnosis of the current moment, a time when a blazer that once cost $3,000 can now run to $7,000 at the very top of the European houses.
Angelchik is ready to put his money where his mouth is as he tries his hand at re-creating a legacy fashion brand for modern times. His Newtimes Group has purchased the 75-year-old Robert Talbott brand and opened a flagship store in Manhattan, right on Madison Avenue.
The concept is intentionally experiential, carrying the full range, from the signature neckwear that once defined the brand and tailored apparel, to expanded lifestyle pieces, with the space designed to blend California ease and New York polish.
For Angelchik, the location is symbolic as much as strategic. He says the address is the very same storefront the brand exited in 2018. It’s a “karma” return chosen because it makes a statement, reintroduces the label to New York and leverages data from a store he knows could perform.
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“We wanted to launch the first store in New York because it’s Madison Avenue. It’s making a statement,” Angelchik said. “It reintroduces the brand, which is quite different now than it was five, six years ago.”
Angelchik didn’t buy the Robert Talbott name to put it behind glass. He acquired the IP in 2021, relaunched in 2023, and then spent time rebuilding the product architecture around a clear value promise: Quality American luxury fashion for men at the entry to high‑luxury pricing.
The reboot started with uncomfortable truths. Men weren’t wearing ties in 2021–22; Robert Talbot’s 1960’s and 70’s oversized dress shirt silhouettes not longer fit, figurately and literally. So Angelchik and his team at Newtimes went back to first principles.
“There was something special about our brand,” he said. “The way that they valued craftsmanship, the way that they were slow to introduce new styles or fabrics. The customer service they provided and the way they lived for this brand is hard to replicate today.”
On ties, the team revived production with the same Italian manufacturer that had made Robert Talbott neckwear for decades, updating widths and patterns without losing the hand and finish longtime clients expect.
On shirting, they recalibrated fits to land between “tent” and “too tight,” building a classic American silhouette that reads polished, not precious. Layering pieces rounded out wardrobes for the commuter from Connecticut, the mid‑career attorney, the finance pro, with fabrics and shapes that flatter real bodies.
The brand kept category price points broadly consistent with its heritage while overhauling the assortment logic to appeal to legacy buyers and a younger cohort.
True Believers
From Angelchik’s vantage point, there are still very few true American luxury players in menswear. The American approach starts with how garments are shaped and how they feel and, importantly, with color. Where Italian and French wardrobes often default to “quiet” palettes, the American customer grew up with team colors and coastal living and wants tonal range without flash. Robert Talbott has historically leaned into color for a brand truth that informed the fall collection’s balance of saturated hues and easy layering.
He said that the Madison Avenue flagship carries that philosophy into the environment: refined, bold, and designed to serve as a cultural hub with curated drops and collaborations that surface the brand’s West‑Coast‑meets‑East‑Coast identity.
Still, the product alone won’t close the sale especially in a climate where label fatigue and logo backlash are real. Even the brand’s New York store manager made the case to Angelchik that the floor team needs “romance,” like the founding tale of Robert and Audrey Talbott, the art‑driven tie atelier, the cumulative choices in fabric and cut. Those, he believes, will get a customer to cross the threshold.
He also knows younger luxury customers have options, including resale, and they’re asking harder questions about price versus product. Angelchik’s plan is to answer with construction, materials and transparency. Jackets use luxury Italian fabrics and sartorial details like a turned armhole for mobility; shirting brings those same mills under a $300 threshold; sportcoats sit roughly between $913 and $1,400 deliberately at the “entry to luxury” band. The brand even supports a Made in America line where fabric and buttons are U.S. made, a rarity that conveys both craft and story.
“The blazer that I could buy from a top Italian luxury brand five years ago perhaps was $3,000, and today it’s $7,000,” Angelchik told Webster. “And to me, it makes no economic sense whatsoever.”
Treading on Tariffs
Even if Newtimes Group isn’t a familiar name, chances are that you are wearing something that they manufactured and sold to the retailer you bought it from. They are one of the industry’s largest supply chain organizations, with more than six decades of sourcing and product‑development expertise. Their footprint spans 50 offices across Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
Angelchik said that the spring’s tariff moves triggered cancellations and order reductions across the industry as retailers reassessed whether a $59 jean could survive at $69-$79 and how much the consumer would accept. In response, many raised novelty fashion apparel prices ~10% and tried to hold core basics steady, making up gross margin with fresh, differentiated product rather than risking a race to the bottom in everyday essentials.
“When the tariffs were announced in April, we had so many cancellations and takedowns of orders,” he said. “Retailers were freaked out. They didn’t know how the market would react or what they would have to upcharge to sell these garments. They needed a moment to think that through.”
He said that sourcing became a chessboard. Product that might have moved from China to Vietnam or Cambodia was also diverted to India — only for India to be slapped with a 50% tariff, creating “double moves” that require new patterns, trims and development time. Lead times stretched; pricing ladders were rebuilt; and every decision had to be weighed against market volatility and inventory risk. The result on the sales floor: tighter buys, less back‑up inventory, and, in many categories, scarcity — not as a marketing trick, but as a balance‑sheet hedge.
From Wholesaler to Retailer
Newtimes is best‑in‑class in fabric R&D, manufacturing and logistics. But running Robert Talbott, which includes a physical store, a D2C site and a wholesale strategy, has been, in Angelchik’s words, more complex than he expected. Brands demand capital; inventory is unforgiving; and the U.S. apparel ecosystem is facing a real credit crunch that makes external financing harder and more expensive. Newtimes’ decision to operate debt‑free lets the team move faster and avoid the “begging for resources” that can stall a turnaround.
As a retailer though, what they get in exchange is clarity: real‑time consumer feedback on fit, fabric, color and price; proof points that inform sourcing and allocation; and a tighter read on where novelty should lead versus where core must simply be dependable.
It also reframes store economics. The Madison Avenue flagship isn’t just a POS terminal, it’s a brand lab. Traffic validates design bets; events build community; collaborations test edges; and, critically for a heritage name, the store creates the context that online carts can’t. That’s the connective tissue between the group’s sourcing scale and its brand ambitions.
Angelchik has studied what goes wrong when legacy labels try to pivot. Some chase a younger customer so hard they abandon their DNA; others cling so tightly to their past they become museum pieces. The Robert Talbott approach is pragmatic: keep the ethos — craftsmanship, service, deliberateness — and update the wardrobe logic and the value equation. That means not everything is for everyone, and not everyone will follow.
As Angelchik puts it: “You do have to understand that you’re going to lose half your old following and, hopefully, pick up new followers.”
