Grail: Second Time's the Charm
Denim has led designer Peter Ross on a winding road. From fetching coffee for denim maven Blue Holdings’ Paul Guez to purchasing denim for Quiksilver and selling denim textiles to denim designers to actually designing denim himself, Ross has seen the blue-jean industry from every angle.
“I’m a denim fanatic. There are hundreds of pairs of jeans in my closet, so along the way I’ve tried to absorb every bit of information I could about the industry,” Ross said. When he launched his contemporary label, Grail, in 2002, Ross focused on knit tops for men and women and quality denim with a good fit.
“We’re a knit tops–focused company, but denim was an integral part of the brand,” the designer said. But after producing one season of denim on his own, taking a few seasons off and then shipping one season as part of a licensing deal with Blue Holdings, maker of Antik Denim, Taverniti So and Yanuk, Ross killed the denim to focus on his tops. Grail’s deal with Blue Holdings fell apart. “It was a rocky road. Denim is its own business, and it can be overwhelming,” Ross said.
Now the Los Angeles–based company is relaunching its denim program for the Spring 2007 season.
Designed and produced in-house at Grail’s manufacturing facility, the revived Grail jeans feature low-rise boot-cut and low-rise skinny silhouettes for men and women in an array of washes and stretch and non-stretch denim.
Gray and black denim are key to Grail’s Spring deliveries. Vintage-inspired styling and classic washes keep the jeans from feeling trendy, Ross said. “There’s no whiskering or stitching or spraying. We focus first on fit, then on fabric and then on wash,” he said. The idea is to create a timeless pair of jeans that customers will reach for time and again. “We want to be like Diesel or Levi’s or even 7 for All Mankind.”
Retailing for $175 to $200, Grail’s relaunched denim will sell at high-end specialty stores such as Atrium in New York and Jean Genie in Los Angeles.
DDL Denim: Here Comes the Denim
San Clemente, Calif.–based Denim Design Lab launched early this year with the Denim Design Lab Kit, a customizing kit packed with an array of tools to make denim look gently lived in or artfully thrashed. Designed as a promotional tool, the $300 kit had retailers asking owner Brian Robbins if DDL offered jeans to customers to customize. “It was one of the first questions everyone asked us. And it was always our plan to launch a line of selvage denim after we’d prepped the market with our concept,” Robbins said. With upwards of 1,200 kits sold so far, Robbins thinks the time is right to launch DDL’s denim for Fall 2007.
Debuting in January at Bread & Butter in Barcelona and then at Project in New York, DDL denim will bow with two basic men’s silhouettes in two fabrications: a raw selvage denim and an “ultra-premium” black-seed Pima cotton selvage denim manufactured at Cone Mills’ White Oak facility in Greensboro, N.C. The raw selvage denim will retail for $100, and washed versions of the denim will retail for $155. The black-seed Pima cotton denim, which Robbins said has a supple hand and is available in six washes, will retail from $170 to $250.
At $100, DDL’s introductory price point is less than most selvage denim lines. That’s because Robbins is hoping consumers will buy one of DDL’s kits as well. To facilitate that, DDL is lowering the retail price for the denim-distressing kit to $200 to encourage retailers to get behind the idea and make it easier for them to merchandise the denim and the kit together.
Robbins plans to launch a women’s line for Spring 2008 but said he’s not sure how keen women are on selvage. In order to show the telltale trim on a selvage jean, “there has to be at least one dead-straight seam. That’s hard to do in women’s jeans because everything is so curvy. If you can’t show the selvage edge somewhere, it’s almost like ’what’s the point?’” Robbins said. DDL will tackle that problem soon, but Robbins promises a tight women’s collection that is clean and begs for a little do-it-yourself customizing.
