Hot Topic Gives Perez Hilton Celebrity Fashion Line a Whirl
Reality-show stars Heidi Montag and Lauren Conrad have lent their names to fashion lines. On May 7, gossip blogger Perez Hilton, 30, announced he will develop a fashion line for retailer Hot Topic, based in City of Industry, Calif.
The line, called Perez Hilton for Hot Topic, will be sold at Hot Topic locations nationwide and on the retailer’s Web site, www.hottopic.com, after June 6. A first-time designer, Hilton, born Mario Lavandeira, helped design a line of women’s T-shirts, hoodies, accessories and flip-flops. The items will be characterized with Hilton’s sassy attitude. For example, the collection’s sunglasses will be called the “P-Nasty” shades. A T-shirt bears the image of a gun and the slogan “Gossip Gangster.” Price points will range from $1.75 to $46.
The celebrity dish on Hilton’s blog, www.perezhilton.com, has grown popular after the past few years. Also on May 7, Montreal-based Astral Media announced that it will broadcast segments of Hilton’s gossip news on its Canadian airwaves. His gossip show “What Perez Sez” has appeared on cable network VH1.
Hilton felt his collection would go well with the rock T-shirts and “Nightmare Before Christmas” hoodies sold at Hot Topic. “Hot Topic is young. I wanted to do something targeted toward my audience. They are young females,” Hilton said.
A match between the colorful Hilton and the rock- and Goth-oriented Hot Topic initially baffled some analysts that follow Hot Topic. According to Jeffrey Van Sinderen of Los Angeles–based financial-services firm B. Riley & Associates, the relationship between the gossip blogger and the retailer is the latest in the line of experiments on the part of Hot Topic. “They have to try something,” Van Sinderen said. “Parts of their business are not working.”
Hot Topic has reported nearly consecutive declines in its comparable-store sales since May 2004. (The retailer saw same-store sales increase in September 2004 and March 2007.) However, during the past few years, the retailer has been looking for new ways to reconnect with music- and pop-culture–obsessed males and females between ages 12 and 22. The retailer will be debuting a social networking site called Shockhound in summer 2008.
Hot Topic tried selling celebrity lines before. In 2005, it sold the short-lived Glitterboy line, co-designed by rock star Davey Havok. One bright spot of Hot Topic’s current business has been partnering with up-and-coming rock bands and retailing their merchandise at Hot Topic, Van Sinderen said. —Andrew Asch
