Longtime Miami-area apparel maker Perry Ellis lays off 328 across Florida
Perry Ellis International, the Doral-based apparel maker that has its roots in an iconic New York fashion brand and a Cuban immigrant’s American success story, said it had laid off many of its workers across Florida.
In a letter dated April 13, a representative said the company could not say whether the layoffs of its 328 workers at its Doral and Tampa locations would be temporary or permanent given the uncertainty about the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing interruptions in its supply chain.
“Perry Ellis is reducing most departments as part of this mass layoff,” the letter said. “Perry Ellis will continue to run its business in an extremely limited capacity.”
Perry Ellis, the namesake of the fashion brand, was born in 1940 in Virginia. He would go on to build an iconic Madison Avenue fashion house before his death in 1986 due to complications from HIV.
In 1999, Supreme International, an apparel distributor created in the late 1960s by George Feldenkreis, a Cuban-born immigrant, purchased the Perry Ellis brand for $75 million and renamed itself after the New York fashion label.
In 2018, Feldenkreis took the company private for nearly half a billion dollars.
A representative for Feldenkreis did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
This story was originally published April 27, 2020 at 3:38 PM.
