California Apparel News

Type in the words “Lip Service clothing” into the search engine Google and you get 15,500 results. There are currently 686 classic Lip Service items for sale on eBay. And on the popular online community MySpace, there’s a forum called “Lip Service addicts,” where fans of the more-than-20- year-old Los Angeles brand can share tips for finding “vintage” pieces or trade photos of themselves and their friends wearing the rock ’n’ roll–inspired fashion. The brand’s own MySpace page (www.myspace.com/lipservice) lists more than 5,000 friends.

These obsessive Lip Service followers are both longtime devotees and newly minted punk-rock teens just discovering the brand for the first time.

Twenty-two years after the company launched with a pair of skull-and-dagger–printed leggings, Lip Service—or, more accurately, its parent company, Original Cult—is undergoing a shift as it looks to maintain its authenticity as it opens up new markets.

It hasn’t always been a smooth ride.

Lip Service founder Drew Bernstein started the process more than two years ago when he began looking for a way to break into the contemporary market. The result was two new Original Cult lines, Rokara and Kill City. Both initially launched with styles for men and women, and both have recently been scaled back to be predominantly men’s. He beefed up staffing at his downtown Los Angeles headquarters to accommodate the new lines and recently scaled that effort back as well, with a round of layoffs that included a brand manager for the new labels.

Bernstein is heading to Las Vegas for the MAGIC Marketplace and the Project Global Trade Show with streamlined collections, a leaner staff and a renewed clarity about his brands and his goals for the company.

New directions, same inspiration

The first line to launch was Kill City in August 2005. With a target market that ranges in age from 15 to 30, Kill City is geared toward three archetypical men: the young guy forming his first band, the early-20-something-yearold with a more-refined fashion taste and the fashion-savvy man in his late 20s who buys premium and contemporary lines but wants something a little different.

The line, which has its roots in the hard-core rock and the hard-core skate scenes, features skinny fits and edgy graphics. While the line includes some trend-driven pieces, such as the superskinny “Junkie” fit jean and hoodies in allover prints, Bernstein and his designers keep the focus on fit, functionality, attention to detail and minimal branding. Kill City sells in boutiques including Oak in Brooklyn, Trash & Vaudeville in New York and Villains in San Francisco, as well as larger chains, including Urban Outfitters and Nordstrom.

“I’ve seen [the Kill City line for] Fall, and it’s taken a different and very cool direction. It’s fusing fashion with a morerock vibe,” said Randy Brewer, general manager and buyer for Villains and Villains Vault. “It’s cleaner and more interesting.”

Rokara launched in July 2006. The line's name is a hybrid of the Japanese word tokara, which means "treasure," and rock 'n' roll.

Already in key retailers—including Fred Segal Santa Monica in Santa Monica, Calif., Villains Vault in San Francisco and Atrium in New York—Rokara is targeted at a more-exclusive customer.

“It’s designed for the sophisticated musician or somebody into what’s going on in fashion but outside of the mainstream,” Bernstein said. “He connects with the authenticity of our design approach. It’s a guy that has an eye for detail, recognizes the quality and design, and has an elevated taste level.”

Rokara’s customer is both the younger man who is looking for a more-upscale premium line as well as the more-established man looking for something with a bit of an artistic edge and a sense of exclusivity.

Rokara’s jeans aren’t quite as skinny as Kill City’s “Junkie”-fit style, but the fit is contemporary and slim. The collection includes jeans and trousers with subtle details such as contrast binding, modstriped cardigans, and jackets and graphic tees.

“It’s just such special pieces,” said Villains Vaults’ Brewer. “The customer is attracted to it from the start, and they find the label later. It has beautiful fabrics, and the fits are right on. It has a look I haven’t seen anywhere else.”

Still strong at 22

The brand that started it all, Lip Service, is still at the core of Original Cult’s business. In recent years, the company has scaled back its business with chains such as Hot Topic in favor of its core specialty boutiques. Some Lip Service retailers, including Trash & Vaudeville, Junkman’s Daughter in Atlanta, The Alley in Chicago and Fashion Nation in Denver, have been buying the line since the beginning.

“I’ve been buying from Drew since he was a rep and selling out of the back of his car,” said Pam Majors, owner of Junkman’s Daughter in Atlanta, which opened in 1982, and carries both Lip Service and Kill City.

Majors said Lip Service has a loyal following at her 10,000-square-foot store.

“They are always clamoring for it,” she said. “I have people who come from out of state to buy it.”

Bernstein describes Lip Service as “subculture rock ’n’ roll,” explaining that it falls in to three collections for men and women that all serve the same market channel: “Blacklist, which is sophisticated gothic––our fashion, done in gothic; Vice, which is fetish-based fashion—whether its cyber or club, it’s all fashion; and RXR—it’s more streetwear, rock ’n’ roll stuff you can wear to work or to a club at night or to play in a band.”

Retailer Cody Varona, owner of Catwalk in Huntington Beach, Calif., and her newly opened Rebels de Royale on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, carries all three Original Cult labels in her stores.

“People look for the brand,” she said. “Each label has a crew that follows it. Lip Service is more the hard-core punker, Blacklist is almost like a couture line with a hard edge. And Kill City is for the younger hipster. I have all three customers in both stores. When somebody walks in the door, I can tell which line they’re looking at.”

Varona praised the company’s well-conceived details and consistent fit of all the lines but reserved high marks for Rokara, which she just started carrying in the new store.

“When I first saw it, I said, ’I love this stuff,’” she said. “It’s grown up; it’s gone that extra step.”

As with all the Original Cult lines, styles in the Lip Service collections are packed with details, from zippers, snaps and D-rings to pintucking and corset lacing.

“At Lip Service, it’s always been about the details. It’s always been about ’Let’s make cool stuff for the customers,’” Bernstein said.

Going offshore and online

The company launched its Web site, www.lip-service.com, in 1999 including a direct-toconsumer e-commerce section. On a recent day, Bernstein was tracking online orders from Moscow, England, Canada, Italy and Australia.

Three years ago, it launched a B2B site, wholesale.lip-service.com, for its retail accounts, who can immediately see what’s in stock and order to fill in their inventories.

The company launched its MySpace page three years ago and the number of “friends” who asked to be listed on the page has ballooned to 5,357, according to a recent tally. “Tell them I said hi,” Bernstein quipped.

Original Cult still operates out of the 10,000-square-foot headquarters in East Los Angeles, where it’s been since 1988. Bernstein recently leased another 10,000-squarefoot space a block away to house inventory and its pick-and-pack operations.

Over the past five years, Bernstein has been moving production offshore. These days, about 60 percent of Original Cult’s production is offshore in China and India. The company produces T-shirts, jeans and a few other items locally.

The company has the laid-back atmosphere of a rock ’n’ roll retail store. Bernstein’s office is carpeted in leopard print, and guests sit in fire engine–red chairs shaped like giant cupped hands. Many of the employees are pierced, tattooed and clad in black—essentially looking more like Lip Service customers than traditional garment workers.

In the days leading up to the Las Vegas shows, the company headquarters was uncharacteristically quiet.

To curtail escalating costs, Bernstein recently laid off about 15 people, bringing the total number of employees to about 40.

“I’ve come to realize that starting new brands is a costly process, and it takes time. I tend to want to rush things, but sometimes you can’t push. It has to go through the natural process,” he said. “We have two new brands, and they are progressing nicely. Every day I see progress. You have to have that balance with the costs associated [with launching a new line] and set the pace accordingly.”

Roots in rock

Lip Service got it start in 1985, when Bernstein, then a sales rep for NaNa and APE Leather, came up with the idea of printing a skull-and-dagger motif on a pair of leggings.

“I didn’t know anything about fashion,” he said. “I tore apart a pair of leggings and laid them on the floor and thought, ’How wide does fabric come?’” he said. He began asking friends, calling fabric suppliers and silk screeners.

“I was basically building a cost sheet,” he said.

The leggings sold well at Los Angeles retailers, including Retail Slut and NaNa. Soon he was adding more prints and new fabrics, and the company took off.

Another sales boost came in the late ’80s when Guns ’N Roses singer Axl Rose was photographed in a Lip Service motorcycle jacket.

The jacket—a motorcycle- style jacket in an allover print with the word “war” and a question mark—was an old style from a previous season that GNR guitarist Izzy Stradlin pulled out of a box in the warehouse.

After photographs of Rose wearing the jacket appeared, retailers and consumers were soon asking for the print again.

“Sales shot though the roof,” he said. The company’s connection to the rock scene continues. The Kill City line is worn by musicians in bands, including Wolfmother, 30 Seconds to Mars and Bleeding Through.

Connecting to the core customer

The company had retail stores in the late ’80s and early ’90s, first on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles and a second store on Hollywood Boulevard. Both closed in the early 1990s.

Bernstein remains open to the idea of returning to retail one day.

“I love the idea behind retailing,” he said. “It puts the brand out there in a totally different way than having the buyer edit the line.”

With two decades of hindsight, Bernstein is a bit philosophical about the changes in the apparel industry—and the company’s place in it. He cites fast-fashion retailers with helping to spur competition and drive prices down at retail.

“Original Cult has always prided itself on details and original design,” he said. “We’re not a commodity product. But it’s the way of the world. You design something and sell it to the mass distributors, and they bring it in house. It’s a drag to see what’s happening with the H&Ms and the Forever 21s. [But] Original Cult is more about innovation and design than banging out widgets at cheap prices.”

Lip Service will be exhibiting at the MAGIC Marketplace at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas. Rokara and Kill City will be showing at Project at the Sands Expo & Convention Center. For more information, visit www.lip-service.com, www.rokaralive.com or www.killcity.net.