Los Angeles T-Shirt Line Starts Season With Sin
New manufacturer Audrey Roberts got a crash course in the power of celebrity marketing last month.
Pop star Hilary Duff wore Roberts’ “robot with lace heart” T-shirt in her video “Wake Up,”which was released in August, and teenage girls around the world filled Roberts’ e-mailinbox with requests for the shirt.
Yet the big question facing Roberts and her one-year-old Los Angeles–based company, Audmatic, is whether fans of the wholesome pop star will want her next offering. It’s a series of T-shirts called Seven Deadly Sins. Roberts debuted the line Sept. 8 at Zanzabelle, an ice cream parlor and general store in Los Angeles’ stylish Silverlake neighborhood.
The sins are depicted as animals. For example, a rabbit represents lust, a wolverine represents wrath. Roberts designed images of the animals on appliqueacute;s constructed out of Italian leather then sewed them on the right shoulder of each T-shirt. They come in several sexy styles, such as a tank top with a plunging V-neck.
Price points range from $16 to $32 wholesale. Audmatic is represented by the Nikki & Lucy showroom in Los Angeles.
The exploration of sin and fashion is something new for Roberts, a graduate of the University of Vermont, where she studied physics and sculpting. She started Audmatic last year after finding success as a jewelry designer at the Los Angeles company Planet Jill.
She said pondering the riddles of Einstein and Newton are not completely separate from the apparel business. “Believe it or not, I’ve been able to apply the skills that I learned studying physics toward working in the fashion industry,” she said. “It is about solving impossible problems creatively.” —Andrew Asch
