Fashion Showroom Gambles on Chinatown
Theoretically, a fashion showroom needs no more than a rack and the next season’s styles. The showroom’s surroundings could be as complex or as minimal as needed. Entrepreneur Willard Ford plans to test this theory. He opened a fashion showroom in a converted cinema that once played martial-arts films in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, a neighborhood with a handful of fashion boutiques and no sizable base of wholesale fashion businesses.
Ford’s 722 Figueroa Showroom offers one-of-a-kind men’s suiting, art-inspired fashion and accessories, as well as custom-made denim. The showroom is located at the Kim Sing Theatre along with the FordBrady gallery, a venue for design, furniture and art.
The business of opening a showroom is always tough, but pioneering a new neighborhood might be more of a challenge, said Eric M. Martin. Martin’s The Park showroom is based in a new showroom building, The Lady Liberty. The showroom, which debuted in 2007, is located one block north of established showroom building California Market Center. Martin said it always takes work for a new place to register on buyers’ radar screens, even if a new place is a stone’s throw from an established fashion area.
“Chinatown might be a challenge,” Martin said of the neighborhood, which is located two miles away from the Fashion District. “But if you get a brand that can be popular for 100-plus stores, you can pull in the traffic. Or if you get a specialized brand, buyers will go out of their way for.”
Barbara Kramer, co-founder of trade show Designers and Agents, said she thinks the new showroom will not have a problem finding a crowd. “[Fashion] leaders are always looking for new turf,” she said. “[This showroom] will bring more relevance to Los Angeles.”
Ford developed an entrepreneurial interest in fashion lines such as Ludwig in 2007, and soon he decided to bring the lines into a showroom that he would own and manage at the Kim Sing Theatre complex.
The showroom houses six lines, including Los Angeles–based custom-denim line Rivi, New Zealand–based boardsports-inspired line Huffer and Los Angeles–based art-inspired casual line Ruby Republic. Also featured is a boutique collection by Santa Ana, Calif.–based Harveys; the premium line Ludwig, which mixes graphics of Beethoven and the film “A Clockwork Orange”; and menswear line C-Pas. The Los Angeles–based line uses recycled materials such as parachute fabric and cassette tape to make men’s suiting. It is designed by Pierre Andre Senizergues, president of skate brand Etnies. Price points range from $80 to $100 for Ludwig denim pants to $3,000 for a C-Pas cassette-tape suit.
More than 450 guests dropped by the July 18 grand-opening party, where the designers literally were the entertainment. Harveys founder Dana Harvey did a sewing demonstration on a 1950s sewing machine. Huffer founder Steve Dunstan deejayed club music. Early in the evening, musician Otto Ehling performed Beethoven’s “Patheacute;tique” on keyboards.
For more information, contact showroom manager Soseh Keshishyan at (213) 687-8425. —Andrew Asch
