Hydrolab's Vintage Spinout
Monique Shelton jumped into the apparel business in 2003 when she began selling vintage surf clothes at her boutique, Hydrolab, located in Los Angeles’ Venice neighborhood. But she found vintage isn’t always a sure sell, even in Los Angeles, where the fashionable are obsessed with vintage-rock T-shirts.
Sales of boardshorts and surf T-shirts from the 1960s were flat, so Shelton and her partners, Heather McNab and Rene Acuntilde;a, changed course in April 2004. They decided to take the spirit and some of the graphics of vintage surf and put them on fashionable clothes that could be sold in any high-end, contemporary boutique. The results have been a splash.
Hydrolab debuted at the Pool Trade Show in Las Vegas last month and was sold to such hip boutiques as The Closet in Newport Beach, Calif.
The staples of the collection are men’s and women’s T-shirts, thermals and hoodies with Hydrolab’s vintage-style graphics. But the star of the collection is the “Aloha Western” shirt from the cut-and-sew category.
The shirt takes an American classic, the Western shirt, and gives it a twist with surffriendly Hawaiian prints on the collar, cuffs and front-pocket flaps. The shirt’s dominant colors aren’t regulation cowboy, either. They range from white to pink to espresso.
The re-imagining of the Western shirt influenced Lane Saunders, men’s buyer for The Closet, to make a deal with Hydrolab. “It’s a fresh new look on a proven winner,” Saunders said. “Western shirts are moving well.”
The “Aloha Western” shirt wholesales for $60. Hydrolab’s T-shirts wholesale for $18.
The “Aloha Western” is one of Hydrolab’s first experiments in mixing styles and traditions in surfwear. But the main inspiration of the label remains the excitement of the classic 1950s and 1960s surf shops.
“It was a badge of honor to wear the shirt of your local surf shop,” Shelton said. “You had to earn it by surfing or skating for the shop—or if you were pesky. Either way, you’d be proud to wear it.” —Andrew Asch
