Raleigh Entrepreneur Backs New Paris Fashion House

One chance encounter, two unlikely partners and a new luxury fashion house

A Raleigh contractor walks into a Paris hotel lobby—and walks out with a future fashion partner. Sounds like the setup to a joke, but for local entrepreneur John Cooper, a chance encounter with luxury designer Islam Dadov two years ago ultimately led to the launch of fashion house DADOV at Paris Fashion Week this fall. Call it fate, divine intervention or a happy coincidence—but Cooper chalks it up to his late grandma.

“My grandmother is still a very big presence in my life, I pray to her almost every day,” says Cooper, who founded Raleigh-based Cooper Tacia General Contracting and Cooper Charitable Foundation. “I felt like she put him in front of me, and I’m supposed to help this person.”

It was Dadov’s backstory that immediately resonated with Cooper. Raised in poverty in Mozdok, Russia, Dadov lost his father as a child and later his stepfather in a bombing, leaving him to help support his mother and two sisters by selling individual cigarettes.

Despite those hardships, Dadov put himself through university before moving to Moscow to work at Zara. His talent for visual merchandising caught his boss’ attention, leading to a career spanning Gucci and Dior across Milan, Barcelona and Paris. 

“For me, I don’t know anything about fashion, but I got a person in front of me who speaks six languages and he’s working for the biggest fashion houses in the world—I don’t have to know much about what he does to know that he must be good,” says Cooper, noting that Dadov had previously tried to start his own fashion house in Russia, but the war in Ukraine led to trade embargoes that inhibited him from getting materials and forced him to shut it down.

Cooper’s conversation with Dadov—and the fact he wanted to start another fashion house of his own in Paris but lacked the funding—stuck with him, and three months later, he reached out with an offer to invest. After turning him down twice, Dadov eventually accepted—and the DADOV fashion house was born.

And the house’s name is more than eponymous—it’s legacy: Dadov adopted his late stepfather’s surname as a teenager so he could share a name with his younger sisters.

“As a child, I was told that creating and designing was not meant for boys, so I buried that passion for years,” recalls Dadov. “Launching DADOV in Paris is my way of coming full circle, allowing myself to build what I was meant to create—dedicated to the strength of each member of my family.”

Raleigh, too, played a role beyond Cooper’s partnership. Dadov traveled to the City of Oaks to develop early handbag concepts with industrial designer Cata Chopra, creating paper prototypes that were sent to Italy and refined into the final designs. 

Fast-forward to the Fashion Week debut, Cooper says it “went really well,” garnering attention from fashion insiders, followers, media and prospective customers—even securing a few initial sales.  

“It’s amazing to think all of this started with a random conversation between two strangers in a hotel lobby,” emphasizes Cooper, who established the house’s office with Dadov on Paris’ famed luxury shopping street Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, about a block from Hermès’ and Chanel’s HQs. “It makes me so happy for him.”

As for what’s next? The pair has already started scouting storefronts in Paris—which Cooper will, naturally, oversee the construction of—hinting additional drops every three or so months, with plans for clothing and shoes down the line. And so if Cooper is right about fate, this may be only the beginning. 

THE BAGGAGE: 
Three bags, three backstories.  Meet the debut DADOV collection.