California Apparel News

Westcoast Exclusive allowed Southern California retailers to place orders and preview Fall lines produced by top menswear labels in an upscale, intimate setting, although some participants said contemporary offerings were fewer and crossover buying opportunities were lost because New York–based Project Global Trade Shows did not return to Los Angeles this season.

The show, held Jan. 30–Feb. 1 at the W Hotel in Los Angeles’ Westwood neighborhood and organized by Los Angeles’ The Exclusive LLC, featured 41 exhibitors, including companies from Germany and France. Nearly 50 exhibitors came last year, and 200 vendors have registered for The Exclusive’s Feb. 13–15 run in Las Vegas.

The exhibitors who came ranged from Italian suit label Ermenegildo Zegna to Garden Grove, Calif.–based T-shirt line Three Dots Inc. And the buyers who showed up wrote orders.

“We write a lot of business here,” said Denise Mangimelli, who runs Boca Man with her husband, Michael, in Pacific Palisades, Calif., as she made her way to Tommy Bahama. Mangimelli estimated that she wrote 20 orders at the show.

Project had scheduled its sophomore appearance on the West Coast to run for three days starting on Jan. 31. It will hold its first event in Las Vegas Feb. 13–15. Sam Ben-Avraham, who founded Project two years ago, said he cancelled the Los Angeles show because menswear buyers were accustomed to traveling to Las Vegas for trade shows and going to Los Angeles as well would have been too much. He added that he has no timeline for Project’s return to Los Angeles.

The two-day overlap between Project and Westcoast Exclusive could have helped buyers such as Robert Keirstead, co-owner of Indigo in Santa Monica, Calif. Keirstead, who stocks contemporary labels for men and women, said he was unhappy that Project cancelled its West Coast show. While he likes “the feel” of Westcoast Exclusive, which placed exhibitors in quiet rooms furnished with couches and tables on the eighth and 10th floors of the W, he said the show did not offer as many contemporary lines as he had hoped.

The only appointment Keirstead made at this show was with Agave Denimsmith, a denim and T-shirt line designed by Jeff Shafer, formerly of BC Ethic and Solitude Clothing.

“His jean line is probably one of the best on the market right now for a guy,” Keirstead said, adding that his shop was one of the first to carry Agave after the collection bowed for Spring 2003. “The sales are picking up, and it’s a great line.”

Shafer said he had more than 30 appointments during the show and that all buyers placed orders. Although last August’s show had more momentum thanks to Project, Shafer noted that Project’s absence this season enabled Westcoast Exclusive to return to its roots.

“With Project moving to Vegas, it kind of de-energized the number of stores that would have come,” Shafer said. “What it did was refocus The Exclusive into what it was meant to be: a great regional repwriting show.”

Agave’s bestsellers included a 1-by-1 rib Supima cotton T-shirt that underwent two washes and had a baby cover stitch ($32 wholesale) and jeans made of 8-ounce Japanese ring-spun denim featuring a light “Santa Barbara” finish ($75 wholesale). Shafer also showed denim that integrated polyurethane—instead of Lycra or spandex— for a bit of stretch.

DeBe, an Italian maker of dress shirts, sat on the opposite end of the style spectrum from Agave, but the company secured nine appointments and received eight drop-ins. Heather Brockwell, a Los Angeles–based sales representative who covers 14 Western states for DeBe, said traffic was lighter than she had expected. She said she did not know whether that was caused by her location in a corner of the 10th floor or by the fact that she had begun representing the line six weeks ago. Brockwell noticed that—perhaps in reaction to the plethora of striped shirts on the market—buyers placed orders for all of her pure-white shirts. Also popular was a shirt with an oversize check pattern in fuchsia and burgundy. Made in Italy out of 100 percent cotton, DeBe’s shirts feature high collars and French or barrel cuffs and wholesale from $33 to $35.

Menswear staple Tommy Bahama experienced “a healthy show,” according to Bob Ritz, regional marketing manager for the Seattle-based company, which also showed its Island Soft and Indigo Palms lines. Ritz estimated that Tommy Bahama and Indigo Palms each had 17 two-hour-long appointments and Island Soft had about 12. A steady seller for Tommy Bahama was its camp shirt, available in silk, cotton, linen and Tencel and wholesaling from $40 to $50.