Robert Jatahy is the chief executive of Grupo Soma, one of Brazil’s largest fashion conglomerates. The group includes brands like São Paulo Fashion Week favourites Animale and Cris Barros as well as labels with sizable retail networks such as Hering, NV, Maria Filó, Foxton, Fábula and Dzarm. The group began with Roberto Jatahy founding Animale with his sister, Claudia Jatahy, in 1991. A decade later, he led the process of creating Grupo Soma, which consolidated the Animale business with Farm Rio, an accessible luxury brand founded in 1997 by Kátia Barros and Marcello Bastos offering colourful printed styles inspired by the carioca lifestyle.
Jatahy, in conjunction with Farm Rio’s global CEO Fabio Barreto, has overseen impressive growth for the brand in recent years. By 2023 Farm Rio had over 90 mono-brand stores across Brazil and over 400 wholesale doors internationally, including La Rinascente in Milan, Liberty’s in London, KaDeWe in Berlin and El Corte Inglés in Madrid. In the US, Jatahy and Barreto opened mono-brand stores in New York, Miami and Los Angeles, and secured prominent department store stockists like Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom. “When we were first studying the US market, some people would come to us and say we’re too colourful or too much, but we’ve found exactly the opposite,” Barreto told BoF in 2022. Jatahy holds a degree in economics from Brazil’s Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio).
