Vintage Denim for the Modern Market
Aiming to secure a toehold in the ferociously competitive market for premium denim, Michael Paradise and Michael Cassel are resurrecting a 110-year-old label and using exclusively selvage denim in a new line of jeans focusing on authenticity and fabric.
Stronghold is the name of the new venture from Paradise, previously fashion director of North Beach Leather, and Cassel, a former partner in Von Dutch Originals LLC. It also was the name of the first denim manufacturer in Los Angeles, which dressed miners before it went out of business during the Great Depression.
Paradise said the pair discovered Stronghold when they were researching pre–World War I denim lines. They also purchased the tattered remains of a pair of jeans found in a silver mine in Nevada and reproduced the historical garment’s three-part buttons, rivets and buckle backs for their new line, which wholesales from $120 to $500. The $120 model is a classic five-pocket pair with tri-color stitching, buckle backs, wide cuffs and a 20-inch bottom. The $500 model is woven and dyed by hand. The jeans are, for the most part, a little cleaner than those offered by other companies that are partial to patches, holes and severe treatments.
“Why get this gorgeous fabric and screw it up?” Paradise asked. Cassel, who upholds the marketing philosophy that “authenticity sells itself,” said selvage denim “is the authentic fabric of jeans.”
Paradise said that, in September, Stronghold plans to release special denim pants that replicate pre–World War I jeans. To be sold under the Heritage Group moniker in four styles, these jeans will wholesale for more than $200. Next in the line will be work and jean jackets, knitwear, and vintage leather pieces, Paradise said.
Paradise and Cassel, who started working on the company in August 2004, launched the brand in February at the Project Global Trade Show in Las Vegas and showed subsequently in ENK International’s Fashion Coterie in New York and Designers & Agents in Los Angeles. Paradise forecasted that the company’s annual wholesale volume will reach $1.5 million to $2 million in 2005 and then $5 million to $6 million in 2006. He added that Stronghold will be limited to “only the best” retailers, including E Street Denim Co. in Highland Park, Ill.; Lane Crawford in Hong Kong; Rolo in San Francisco; and American Rag Cie in Los Angeles. Paradise said he wants to contain the number of stores to 100 across the globe.
Thomas George, the owner of E Street Denim, passed on the $500 model but said the other jeans in the line are nice. “It looked a little bit different,” he said.
For more information, call (310) 779-0110.
—Khanh T.L. Tran
