Modern Menswear: LRG Has Underground Inventive, Overground Effective
LRG Has Underground Inventive, Overground Effective
Santa Ana, Calif.-based men’s label LRG is looking to maintain the inventiveness of the underground, independent movement in fashion and entertainment, while building a brand that can stand in the mainstream.
The company launched in late 1999, with first deliveries starting in fall 2000. Founders Robert Wright and Jonas Bevacqua chose the name LRG because they wanted to make a clothing line in the spirit of uplifting and unifying people. The acronym stands for Lifted, meaning to uplift or elevate; Research, meaning the study of fashion; and Group, referring to all of the people involved in their company or their underground lifestyle.
Wright and Bevacqua met through a mutual friend and discovered that they both had a passion for merging independent attitudes and lifestyles with fashion.
“We thought that there was room in the market for something new as far as design, but more importantly, we had never seen a company that had an independent concept and belief behind the brand,” said Wright. “A few companies had concepts but they were always very general, mass-market-type concepts. Our concept and brand identity [are] directed at a specific customer.”
Bevacqua emphasized that LRG attempts to deliver a consistent message of independence to that customer.
“It’s not just a name on a shirt,” he said. “There is meaning and substance behind not only the brand but every piece in the line.We design what we like rather than designing what ’the market’ wants. We think people should wear clothes by companies that they believe in rather than just buying whatever brand name is hot at the moment.”
The LRG line, according to Wright, consists of “denim flipped many ways, using many techniques. It has polyurethane-coated nylons, stretch-woven fabrications, engineered style-specific screen printing, non-traditional labeling and trim materials, and water-resistant fleece. It also has co-op projects with record labels and music artists.”
LRG launched as a menswear line, but Wright said that due to overwhelming requests, the company plans to launch a women’s line next year.
The line is currently carried by independent boutiques and skate shops. Bevacqua said that the company has purposely avoided the larger stores.
“We sell to stores like True in San Francisco, Fred Segal in Los Angeles and Mimi’s in New York,” he said. “But we don’t currently sell to any major stores, and that’s by choice, because we are looking more to build at the independent-store level rather than overexposing our brand on the mass-market level.”
The plan for LRG is to continue to work with music entities and build the brand identity in the underground. —Darryl James
