California Apparel News

Concert T-shirts are familiar items for sale at rock concerts. But at Orange County music festival Hootenanny, an 11-year-old tradition, the fashions went beyond the standard band-logo tee.

For many vendors at the day-long rockabilly music festival, held July 2 in Orange, Calif., the venue was the right place to sell vintage and vintage-inspired fashions or to introduce a new line of clothes.

Karen Mamont picked the festival as one of the first places to show new Los Angeles label Western Denim. “I wanted this crowd to see it. This event is so fashion,” said Mamont, director of fashion and public relations for Twin Concepts LLC, which owns the Western Denim, Spy Zone Exchange and Sharagano labels.

Mark Frederickson, the volunteer organizer of the concert’s retail section, said clothes were an obsession for the pompadoured and tattooed Hootenanny crowd. While rockabilly musicians and punk bands Social Distortion, Lee Rocker, Junior Brown, Throw Rag, Three Bad Jacks and James Intveld played at the event, produced by Los Angeles–based Goldenvoice, the carefully coiffed and well-dressed crowd surveyed the classic cars featured in the vintage auto show and shopped among more than 60 vendors selling clothes, accessories, and even bicycles and stand-up basses. The number of vendors increased this year from 45 last year.

“These aren’t people who buy T-shirts; these are people who live this fashion,” Frederickson said.

This year’s crowd turned out to be in a buying mood. Western Denim sold more than 75 percent of its embellished jeans and tees and hoodies with Old West, American Indian and Mexican designs. Most Hootenanny retailers said sales improved compared with those of the previous year.

While concert T-shirts typically average $25, some Hootenanny-goers spent more than $80 on dresses at event booths such as the one run by Los Angeles–based Stop Staring. Alicia Estrada, president and designer of the fashion label, started selling her 1940s- and 1950s-inspired dresses at Hootenanny more than seven years ago. “Everybody else was selling T-shirts and vintage clothes. I wanted to make my own line because a lot of girls can’t wear vintage,” she said.

She sold more than 60 dresses during her first visit to Hootenanny. She estimated her 2005 Hootenanny sales increased 30 percent, compared with those of the previous year. The concert also provided an important chance for Estrada to meet face to face with her core customers: rockabilly women such as Precious Misquez of East Los Angeles.

Misquez mixed music and fashion at the concert, where she purchased a Stop Staring dress for her daughter, Alexxis. She thought one of the advantages of going to the concert was getting fashion advice from Estrada.

“I’d rather get it directly from her,” Misquez said. “[The dress] is going to fit right, and it’s going to last.”

Southern California fashion and accessories companies—including Burning Planet, Trophy Queen, Revamp, Sammy’s Straps and Rock Steady—made a fashion splash by renting booths, mostly 10 by 10 feet, at a cost of approximately $300.

Josh Brownfield, vice president of Santa Ana, Calif.–based Steady and Rock Steady dedicated his booth to selling $5 T-shirts as a way to help drive traffic to the retailers that carry his line and spread the word on his company among the concertgoers. “We hope they’re going to be interested in this company for the rest of their lives,” Brownfield said.

—Andrew Asch