Jennifer Tommasi Bardelle is a spitfire.
The owner of the upscale denim and lifestyle brand Jacob Cohën has survived a slew of tragedies in her life, but she’s never lost her passion for the brand or the fashion industry.
The Long Island, N.Y.-born and Milan-based Tommasi Bardelle is the widow of Nicola Bardelle who set out to transform the denim business with a premium jeans brand.
As the story goes, the Jacob Cohën brand was created by Nicola Bardelle’s father Tato in 1985. The family was considered a denim dynasty with a long history manufacturing jeans for some of the world’s best-known brands. They also created the popular Americanino jean that was centered around the American lifestyle.
But Tato Bardelle believed there was an opportunity to move into the premium market. So he established Jacob Cohën and named it in honor of Jacob Davis, the inventor of the rivet, adding the Cohen name to differentiate it from his other business and honor the Jewish heritage of Levi Strauss.
Although the Bardelle family had become one of the richest in Italy, they fell on hard times in the 1990s, lost everything and filed bankruptcy, Tommasi Bardelle said, and the Jacob Cohën brand became dormant. That was until 2002 when Nicola Bardelle revived the name with a mission to create luxury jeans for men. He used only noble and precious fabrics such as Japanese Kurabo and tailored, yet comfortable, silhouettes and personalized each pair with jeweled buttons, hand-embroidery, linings that traditionally are used for shirts and pony-hair back labels.
“He started with two fabrics in three washes,” she said, adding that women’s models were introduced soon after.
He also produced high-end leather apparel, another of his passions.
The brand had found a licensee and was in expansion mode when tragedy struck. In August 2012, Nicola Bardelle was visiting Saint-Tropez where Jacob Cohën had just opened its first store and was killed in a motorcycle accident, leaving his wife and two small children.
Tommasi Bardelle was devastated, but also determined to keep her husband’s vision alive. “Jacob Cohën was our third child,” she said.
From then on, she worked tirelessly to regain the license, a process that she said resulted in a dozen lawsuits. Once they were resolved in 2023, she was able to gain control of the brand and elevate Luca Roda, a longtime supporter of the company, to chief executive officer.
Fast forward to today and Tommasi Bardelle’s baby is opening its first store in the U.S., at 790 Madison Avenue on 67th Street. The 3,121-square-foot corner flagship is located inside a 1960s modernist building and boasts 12 large windows, six on the ground floor and six on the second level.
The store was designed by Storage Milano in partnership with Tommasi Bardelle and is a physical manifestation of the brand. Denim, leather, wood, metal and minerals have transformed the space into a contemporary setting that is unquestionably upscale but also warm and home-like. The brand’s signature fragrance wafts through the store, which houses womenswear on the ground floor and men’s on the second level.
Walls and ceilings are finished in hand-applied cement-based plaster. The same material is used for the moldings. The floor is made from gray klinker tiles laid in a herringbone pattern.
Leather plays a central role, used on walls, displays upholstered surfaces and the staircase, complete with a backlit skylight, with its handcrafted wood moldings covered by hand in leather. The same principle is repeated on the walls, which are composed of a sequence of upholstered panels. On selected panels, the Jacob Cohën monogram is also crafted in leather.
Tommasi Bardelle said the staircase along took one-and-a-half months to complete, pushing back the store opening date.
Denim, the foundation of the Jacob Cohën brand, also becomes part of the design, used on the upholstered wall panels. Between the panels, a vertical rail system allows shelves and hanging bars to be positioned and rearranged.
Light and dark leather and denim are complemented by rotary-cut okoumé wood, sanded, stained and finished with shellac.
In front of the windows, there are articulated metal screens made of steel with a brushed light-gold finish.
The second floor, which Tommasi Bardelle described as a “gentleman’s club,” has a bar that’s finished in denim and wood with a backdrop of textured glass in orange tones with a brushed light-gold finish. There’s also a pool table, made by a 150-year-old company in Naples, Italy, and furnishings created in collaboration with Asnaghi.
She said the bar will serve a special barley cappuccino that she discovered in a spa in Europe that is also served at the company’s store in Milan.
The fitting rooms for both men and women are conceived as small, self-contained spaces. Each features ribbed velvet walls in beige and blue; one women’s room features custom wallpaper developed specifically for the New York store. The walls will require store employees to comb them several times a day, she said.
A lower level, not accessible to the public, features a kitchen, office and storage.
While the details and care taken to create the store are unmistakable, it’s still the merchandise that is front and center. Tommasi Bardelle said each pair of jeans has a distinct patch and buttons. The linings are also individualized and each men’s pair comes with a matching bandana. These details are changed seasonally. The washing details are printed inside and the labels are made from high-end Japanese paper. Most retail for around $500 with limited-edition models selling for more.
Although jeans remain the hallmark of the brand, the collection also features outerwear, sweaters, trousers, blazers, knitwear and T-shirts.
“Denim is still at our core, but how many jeans can people have,” Tommasi Bardelle said.
She said she chose New York for her first U.S. store because it was the state in which she was born and there’s “lots of potential” to further expand the brand’s reach in the States with a flagship in the city. “It’s a statement,” she said.
Jacob Cohën also operates stores in Paris, Saint-Tropez and Nice, France; Milan, Rome, Forte dei Marmi and Taormina, Italy; Geneva, Switzerland; Puerto Banús and Palma de Mallorca, Spain; Antwerp and Knokke, Belgium; Prague, Czech Republic; Oslo; Tokyo (Midtown and Ginza) and Osaka, Japan. The brand has a robust wholesale business with retailers such as Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Andrisen Morton, Boyds, the Mitchells stores, Harry Rosen and Holt Renfrew, among others.
Tommasi Bardelle said her goal is for Jacob Cohën to grow “step by step,” and rather than open a showroom in the States, the store will fill that role. “This is my business card,” she said.
In the future, she’d like to add other units in cities such as Miami or Palm Beach, Fla., and Aspen.
“The opening of our first flagship store in the U.S. is a major milestone for us,” Tommasi Bardelle said. “It means competing in the home market of denim. It is a challenge that Jacob Cohën has enthusiastically embraced, drawing on its expertise, Italian style and the exceptional quality of the materials used in our collections. I believe all our stores should be places where people come together, even before they become places to shop. I envisioned the New York store as a sophisticated and elegant living room, rigorously Made in Italy, just like every Jacob Cohën item, where our men’s and women’s collections become elements of design, to be admired before being worn.”
The store officially opens on Oct. 27.