Matthew Adams Dolan Tapped to Helm Womenswear at Jacob Cohën

MILAN — American designer Matthew Adams Dolan has been tapped to helm womenswear at Italian premium denim brand Jacob Cohën, effective from the spring 2024 collection.

Operating under the artistic direction of Jennifer Tommasi Bardelle, Adams Dolan will be in charge of designing both the brand’s main collection and the Jacob Cohën Couture line.

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The appointment follows an initial tie-up between the company and Adams Dolan on a women’s capsule collection in July. As reported at the time, the Jacob Cohën by Matthew Adams Dolan collaboration included designs predominantly crafted from denim , a fabric that’s been often employed by the designer for his namesake brand, too.

“Matthew Adams Dolan’s style and his creativity are perfect to express the evolution of Jacob Cohën toward the fashion world. He has been able to make the style codes defining the brand his own, without altering the DNA,” said Tommasi Bardelle.

“Since the very beginning of my collaboration with Jacob Cohën I could express my creativity freely,” echoed the designer, underscoring he’s committed to keep “infusing my know-how and style in the brand fully respecting its codes.”

At the time of their first collaboration, Adams Dolan said that the partnership with Jacob Cohën gave him “the opportunity to discover an Italian company able to speak an international language, focusing on quality, creative identity and luxury details able to make a real difference,” whereas Tommasi Bardelle, whose husband Nicola Bardelle had relaunched the brand before dying in an accident in 2012, underscored how she saw “the creative flair that has always characterized Nicola’s work” in the American designer.

Born in Danvers, Massachusetts, Adams Dolan studied in Australia, Japan and Switzerland before graduating from the MFA Fashion Design and Society Program at Parsons School for Design in New York. He launched his namesake brand with a spring 2016 collection.

The designer has also collaborated with Rihanna, who first enlisted him to consult on her Fenty for Puma collections and then the launch of her Fenty brand with LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton in 2019. In 2018, Adams Dolan was selected as one of the nine finalists for the LVMH Prize.

The Jacob Cohën brand was trademarked in 1985, but had been dormant until Nicola Bardelle thought to dust it off as an exclusive line, with sartorial jeans available in prestigious boutiques. Hence the label was relaunched in 2003, even if denim already ran in the Bardelle blood since Nicola’s father Tato Bardelle also dressed countless young teenagers here with his hip Americanino and Outsider jeans in the ’80s.

Since the revamp, the Jacob Cohën brand has gradually developed into a total-look and international label, standing out for the use of high-end fabrics, often the same employed for sartorial suits, handmade tailored pants, silver buttons and rivets and ponyskin labels. Innovative highlights included the brand’s first jeans made using a cashmere and denim blend.

In 2020, the company inked a partnership with Italian fashion manufacturer Sinv to create JC Industry, a firm managing the production and distribution of the Jacob Cohën brand and based in the Veneto region between the towns of Schio and Piove di Sacco.

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